


The Maiden and the Selkie

by alatarmaia4



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: F/M, assorted OCs as necessary, boy do i love a good fairy tale, yes this is essentially songfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-03
Updated: 2019-01-25
Packaged: 2019-07-06 15:03:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 42,537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15888435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alatarmaia4/pseuds/alatarmaia4
Summary: In a house on the coast, where the wind from the sea only occasionally blows so strongly as to come through her window, Jester Lavorre is beginning to tire of the pampered, predictable life she'd always led. A chance meeting with both old friends and new leads from one thing to another, and before Jester knows it she's chasing an impossible dream - but with a little help, maybe it won't be so impossible after all.





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey there, I'm finally posting this!
> 
> You, the reader, couldn't possibly know, but this story has been in the works for a WHILE. I started writing it back in March of this year, and while it's fairly short compared to a lot of the other stuff I write, it's been a labor of love. I'm so, so thrilled to be able to put it up and see what people think of it, especially since I didn't expect to ever write anything for this ship.
> 
> As some of you may be able to tell from the title, this story is based on [The Maiden and the Selkie](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGT5lBve_v4), a song by Heather Dale (or possibly only her cover of it, which is the version I like best). It's a complete AU, which you also may have guessed. I'm a fan of them. And while the song may make some plot details a little predictable, I'd recommend listening to it anyway - there's still plenty left in here to surprise you.
> 
> Also, I put some of the lyrics in this chapter, so you might as well.

 

* * *

 

  

    In Nicodranas, there were as many stories as there were people.

    This made it especially unfair that nothing interesting at all had happened to Jester her entire life.

    She had read plenty of stories, especially during her childhood, curled up in a deep pile of squashy pillows and enthralled in one of the many books she’d been provided with. And Jester had loved all of them. The plethora of nannies she’d had as a child could each attest to how deeply she threw herself into things, reenacting her favorite scenes. Her four-poster bed had been a ship, or a jailer’s cart with barred windows, or a wagon that she could stare out of the back of at the ‘mountains’ which ‘her family was leaving’, like the protagonist in her favorite book series _ever_ whose family made her move away from the city she’d been born in because it was dangerously close to the Border Mountains which kept them safe from Xhorhas. And even though the girl was sad to leave, her family was right, and then when they got to their new home she met her new best friend-

    “I know, Jester.” Jester’s mother bent her head to press a kiss to Jester’s hair with a faint jingle of jewelry. She hadn’t taken off her work clothes like she usually did before visiting Jester, but Jester didn’t mind. Her mother was beautiful, and she loved seeing all the little fiddly bits of gold, inset with rubies and garnets and flashy bits and bobs. Sometimes she even got to try some pieces on, as long as she was very careful, which she _loved._ “You’ve told me before.”

    “But it’s so good,” Jester said.

    “Why don’t you read me a little bit, then? While I have time to listen.”

    “Okay!” Jester leaped up - with some difficulty, since her bed was very comfortable and the mattress sank deeply under her weight - and rifled through her bookshelf, looking for the first book in the series. “It’s a little long in the beginning, you must know. But once it gets good, it gets really good!” Jester turned around with the book pressed to her chest. “And the title - oh, I can’t even tell you what it means, it will spoil everything for you. But everything has so much meaning! I keep going back to read it so I can find more things that are linked to what happens later!”

    Jester’s mother was still reclining on the bed, a faint smile gracing her lips. Her red hair spilled out from under the netted crown of gold and precious stones and over her shoulders. She’d drawn on a silk robe to cover her work clothes, but flashes of gold and gems peeked out from under the edges of her sleeve as she reached out to beckon Jester back over.

    “If you love it so much, then it must be good,” she said. Jester eagerly hopped back up onto the bed, curling into the shape of her mother’s arms and chest. She was getting much too big to keep acting like this, but she saw her mother so infrequently that she thought it must be permissible. And her mother never tried to stop her.

    “Do you want to know who my favorites are?” Jester asked, craning her neck to look up at her mother.

    “Sure.”

 

    Jester was lucky that night. Her mother stayed for a whole half hour before someone came by to say that her patron for the evening was there. Jester got another kiss on the forehead and then her mother swept out, resplendent and humming a tune under her breath. Jester knew it well - it was one of her mother’s favorites, but not one she ever sang for customers. Jester sang a few lines to herself as she put the book away.

    _“At the rising of the full-moon, underneath the elfin oak...She’s unearthed that faery treasure, of which her grandmother spoke...”_ Jester opened her window and leaned out. The stars were sparkling in the sky above Nicodranas, and even with evening drawing towards night it was humid and warm. She could see fireflies flashing in the garden below, and lights in the windows of other houses a little ways away, the shape of them cut into jigsaw pieces by the trees that bordered most of the houses around where she lived.

    It was a wonderful night. Jester hummed the tune of the song to herself under her breath as she lit a candle for herself and placed it on the Traveler’s altar. It was a gaudy mess, with piles of offerings that had accumulated over the years. The least sparkly (and cleanest) thing on it was the little plate where Jester put food, sometimes, in case the Traveler wanted some of her cake. He had as much of a sweet tooth as her.

    In a flash, as some wax dribbled down the side of the candle and anchored it to the altar cloth, the last verse of the song came to Jester. She grinned at the picture of the Traveler, and sang aloud.

    _“Just before the stroke of midnight, They have made it back to sea! And she’s donned that magic seal coat, And become a maid Selkie! Now they’ve gone into the ocean, Hand in hand into the sea, She has gone alo-ong...A fair seal bride for her Selkie!”_

    The flame of the candle flickered to the tune. Jester flopped back onto her mattress, sighing. “I wish _I_ could have an adventure like that,” she said. “Being underwater would be like being in a whole different world, I bet.” She contemplated what it would be like to visit the Elemental Plane of Water. Probably she’d need a magic charm to help her breathe; no doubt she’d have to retrieve it from a witchy old lady who lived deep in the woods, and the old lady would make her do a favor for her in order to get the charm, and then Jester would have to travel far across the lands...

    Jester fell asleep slowly, her adventure drawing her deeper into dreamland until the hills her imaginary self was traversing turned into swells of waves, and then she slept so deeply she didn’t dream at all.

 

* * *

 

 

    Jester woke up early the next day, and not just because it was her birthday. She had an appointment with Aurelian scheduled, and a chance to have something tailored by Aurelian himself was not something to turn up a nose at.

    It was always fun to see Aurelian, even though he only came to see her for business, and Jester was always disappointed to see him go. He was one of the few regular visitors she’d had, ever since she was little. As far as Jester knew, he’d made her baby clothes. He made her mother’s work outfits too, and a lot of the other stuff she bought to wear when she was alone, or when she wanted to look impressive in something pretty and expensive.

    But Aurelian didn’t live in her mother’s house. He had his own shop near the wealthiest district of Nicodranas, the Mithril Ward. Jester lived at the top floor of a house that was very close to it, but not inside. She could see the silver flags that waved from the walls of the district from her little window.

    Jester used to entertain dreams of someone building a house near her mother’s. The top floor would be at the level of hers, and there would be a rich woman’s son (or daughter, depending on her mood) who lived in the room at the top. They’d see each other and put a string across the gap so they could send messages between their rooms, and he’d fall in love with her, and she’d be with him forever and her mother would be the proudest of her she’d ever been.

    A lot of her mother’s goals for her seemed to revolve around Jester being brought into a rich family and living in luxury. Jester didn’t mind any of that, but it did seem like a waste to marry someone when she could have the same things by doing what her mother did. But, Jester supposed, it probably got boring eventually, having sex with people all the time even if some of them wanted a nice conversation first.

    Jester thought about her future a lot, because the closer her birthday got, the more her mother seemed to bring it up. Jester had a feeling that Something Was Going To Be Done soon, because she’d heard one of the servants talking about it with another after they’d brought up her dinner. She didn’t know much more than that, though, because she kept forgetting to ask her mother about it.

    But she wondered. A lot.

 

* * *

 

 

    Jester’s birthday was in summer, which she loved, because summer was the best time of year. The clouds cleared out from the skies, and the whole of Nicodranas was green and warm. She’d leaned out farther than was wise from her window more than once, after throwing it wide open to enjoy whatever breeze might wander her way.

    At the moment, she was doing exactly that, though she wasn’t wearing anything other than a chemise, because Aurelian had come over with her new dresses.

    “Try this on, my dear!” Aurelian folded a beautiful sea-green dress and a pile of petticoats over the silkscreened divider which currently hid Jester. “First tell me what you think, and then if you like it I will make any changes that we need to make.”

    “Okay!” Jester dragged herself away from the window. One of Aurelian’s assistants, a young human woman, was on her side of the screen. It was a familiar routine, being helped into soft linen petticoats and letting herself be manhandled. Jester liked having someone else tie off the band of her skirts - it was always so annoying when she had to tie a nice bow that she couldn’t even see.

    “It feels nice so far,” Jester said as the assistant helped her into the dress’s skirt. She looked down at it as she was spun around so the assistant could do the ties, and stuck her hand through the open darts in the sides. Aurelian was always so nice about leaving her pockets. The skirt was a nice color, and flouncy like he’d promised.

    “Excellent, excellent!”

    “The bodice is a little tight, though,” Jester added, squirming as the assistant helped her into it. She never liked wearing her stays as tight as Aurelian had her laced in.

    “Hm. That _is_ no good. You are getting far too strong,” Aurelian teased. Jester snorted. So she exercised - didn’t everyone? She didn’t have much else to do in her room. “What about the style? The color?”

    “It’s very pretty,” Jester said. She spun, just to test it, and the skirts whirled away from her legs. She lifted her tail to let it spin out higher.

    “Hm,” Aurelian said again. “Come out here.” Jester did, and he scrutinized her closely. “Your arms have shrunk, if I’m not mistaken.”

    “Sorry,” Jester giggled. “I might’ve been flexing a little last time.” Aurelian sighed.

    “I’ll have to take it in a little then,” he said, “and maybe add a little something to the sides, if I can’t take it in along the hemline. What do you think?” The question was directed to his assistant.

    “A bold choice, as usual,” the assistant said. The other two were lounging on Jester’s little chaise, the already-tried-on dresses carefully folded on their laps. “You could incorporate the same lace that you put on the skirt.”

    “Brilliant! Yes. You, take that off, I must fix it now.” Aurelian snapped his fingers, and Jester darted back behind the screen. Her old dress was handed over the screen, and in a trice she was back in her comfortable, now-unfashionable clothes. Aurelian’s assistants were always frighteningly competent. “I will try to see you again by no later than tomorrow, my dear. At least your mother won’t find out I was delayed.”

    “What do you mean?” Jester stood on the chair behind the screen to look over it at Aurelian.

    “Don’t you know? Your mother’s gone up to the Mithril Ward at the request of some young lord to be his entertainment for the night.”

    “She’s not here?” Jester’s tail drooped.

    “I apologize,” Aurelian said, and he sounded like he meant it. “I don’t think the lords of the Mithril Ward care as much as she does whether it’s your birthday.” He reached up to pat Jester’s hand. “I’m sure the cooks have still planned a great feast for you. It won’t be all bad.”

    Jester sank down back to the window seat. From the other side of the screen she heard Aurelian pack up his things, and then the door clicked shut.

    Her mother wasn’t even _here._

    Jester flopped down on the sill of the window, tears welling up in her eyes. Even the beautiful day couldn’t make her feel better. It was her _birthday,_ and her mother still had to be busy with work. It wasn’t _fair._

    Jester stayed at the window, feeling sorry for herself and getting her sleeves wet by constantly mopping at her eyes. She only raised her head when there was a knock at her door.

    “Come in,” Jester sniffed. The door creaked open, and Ofelia peeked her head inside.

    “I saw Aurelian leave,” she said. Ofelia was Jester’s mother’s assistant, and managed the affairs of the whole house. She was also Jester’s best friend. “What happened? I thought he was doing a tailoring thing today.”

    “Everything’s gone bad.” Jester turned away again, and pillowed her head on her arms. “How come you didn’t tell me that Mom was gone?”

    “Oh, is that what happened.” Ofelia closed the door and came to sit beside Jester. “You know she doesn’t plan these things, darling.”

    “But it’s my birthday.” Jester turned her head so she didn’t have to look at Ofelia. “She could make an exception just once, couldn’t she?”

    “You know that’s not how it works,” Ofelia chided gently. “Don’t be so down, Jester. You’re getting to be such a mature young woman. That’s a good thing! Soon you’ll be fending off young men from all quarters.”

    “Not if they never see me,” Jester grumbled, choosing not to make the obvious remark about young women. “And they’d have to go through Mom first, and that would get rid of half of them, and then the rest of them wouldn’t like my horns. Or my tail.” She’d seen what Nicodranas thought of those with Infernal blood. Even her mother couldn’t stop that.

    “If they would think that of you, your mother wouldn’t be letting them through.”

    “Letting?” Jester’s tail flicked agitatedly as she processed that, and then she sat bolt upright. “What do you mean?”

    Ofelia shrugged. “She’s mentioned a few families she’s been making inroads with. I think she was expecting to tell you about them today, see what you thought.”

    “She wants me to get married _now?”_ Jester demanded, aghast.

    “What’s so surprising about that?”

    “She never said anything about it before!”

    “Well, like I said, today was going to be the day to bring it up, as far as I was aware.”

    “How long has this been happening?” Jester jumped to her feet in agitation. Her, marry some stuck-up lordling? Having to _really_ think about the idea of marrying someone had turned Jester’s opinion of it right around. It had been alright in books or in her fantasies, but in real life? That was a lot to take in at once!

    Ofelia shrugged again. “She’s had rich clients for a long time. I don’t think it’s out of the ordinary to think that she’s been tallying up options for whoever looked most likely to take care of you.”

    Jester scoffed at the idea. She could take care of herself, no problem.

    “Don’t be like that, Jester.”

    “But it’s so new!” Jester cried. “You’re always thinking about marriage, I know that! You’d love for someone to give you a rich husband!”

    “What’s so bad about wanting to live a life like your mother’s without all the work?” Ofelia looked concerned. “Jester, I think maybe you should just think about it. There are a lot worse things that could happen.”

    Jester bit back the replies that jumped to her lips. Ofelia meant it well, she knew that, but Ofelia was a _really_ different kind of person. Jester had realized, in the last year or so, that they were really only friends because Ofelia’s only job when she wasn’t with Jester’s mother was to keep Jester company. In the time after her last nanny had left, Jester had latched onto that companionship. But now she was a little tired of it.

    Well, no. That was a lie. She did like Ofelia a great deal. But sometimes Ofelia was really aggravating.

    “I don’t _want_ to think about it,” Jester said mulishly. “If I’m going to get married, I, I - I want it to be in the next three days, and someone’s got to prove to me that they’re worth loving by then.”

    “That’s ridiculous,” Ofelia protested. “Your mother doesn’t expect it to happen that quickly-”

    “Well, I do! As of right now!”

    “Well, alright,” Ofelia said crossly. “I’ll just leave you here, and you can wait for Prince Charming to show up.” She got up, and only her impeccable manners prevented her from stomping like Jester would have. Jester watched her go sullenly, then threw herself back down onto the window seat, her eyes already tearing up again.

    This was a terrible birthday! It didn’t matter how soon her mother wanted her to get married, it was going to make everything change. Jester didn’t _want_ things to change.

...Well, she wanted to be let out of her room and probably the house more often, but her life was pretty good the way it was! She’d have to go to some new man’s house and stay _there_ all the time. That was the worst kind of change.

    If her whole life was going to be turned upside-down, it could have at least been in the fun way where she was called to a sudden adventure where she was the heroine who got to travel across the lands and see new sights. And yes, maybe it would be nice to have someone pretty as a sidekick, but that wasn’t what marrying into the Mithril Ward was like!

    Jester’s eyes began to sting, and water even more furiously. She squinted them against the sudden pain. A stronger wind had blown in, from the west and not the east, and the salt smell it carried with it was strong enough that Jester felt an itch of a cough beginning in the back of her throat.

    Her window mostly had a view of the Mithril Ward, but to the west, past the sprawl of Nicodranas, a fraction of the sea gleamed in the sunlight. Jester had always been able to see it. She’d never wanted to see it up close so badly before.

    And why shouldn’t she? Jester thought crossly. Her mother got to go everywhere, and Jester couldn’t even leave her room to go to the bathroom, because the bathroom was adjoining. She’d seen the other rooms in the house maybe once; probably she hadn’t even seen all of them. How was that fair?

    Jester felt the faintest impression of a hand on her shoulder, and in the flung-open window a grin was reflected for only an instant.

    Well, if the Traveler thought it was a good idea, that was that, wasn’t it?

    Jester changed dresses again. She had one that still fit that would do - she always insisted on having at least one dress that was more practical than fancy, because she did exercise and it wouldn’t do to sweat all over silk. Aurelian only agreed because he didn’t know what she usually wore her simpler dresses to do.

It was not the first time she’d worn such a dress while sneaking out of her room. She’d learned the way to climb safely down the wall outside her window by the time she was fourteen, though she was taller and heavier now. But she was stronger too, and the stones still had the same little handholds.

    Jester gathered up the gold that she could find lying around in case she needed some, though she left the small pile that sat on her makeshift altar to the Traveler. The salt smell from the sea breeze permeated her room as she rushed around, shoving her coin purse deep into one pocket. Jester hunted around for several minutes before finding her small bag, one that fit her sketchbook, two pencils, her favorite novel, and the sickle she sometimes practiced with. One of the servants had sneaked it to her years ago when she’d begged for something to stave off the boredom with. Now, she was sure she could use it to fend off any thieves.

    Jester checked to make sure the door was locked before she left. She’d gotten into the habit of randomly locking it ages ago, especially when she was upset. By now, everyone knew that if the door was locked, she didn’t want to be bothered until she unlocked it. The key was safe in Jester’s bag, in its own special little case which she’d made the last time she’d gotten very bored.

    Satisfied, Jester went over to the window, made sure her bag was securely buttoned shut, and swung herself out over the sill.

    It was slow going, climbing down the wall. Jester cloaked herself in her Blessing of the Trickster, but that wouldn’t stop her from falling to her death. So she tested each handhold before putting her weight on it, slowly easing from one to the next. And yet in no time at all she was on the ground, and she quickly darted through the tall wildflowers of the yard, around the side of the house, and onto the road.

    Goodbye, room! Today was _Jester’s_ day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's all for now! The next chapter will go up roughly whenever I finish the illustration(s) for it, so....who knows? :/ I'm in school (and have many other WIPs....) at the moment, but I'll do my best to get it up quickly. As always, comments are the best motivator!
> 
> Hope you liked chapter one!
> 
> (Note: the title card is borrowed from Cartoon Saloon's Song of the Sea, an absolutely fantastic animated movie which is also about selkies. I have photoshopped it.)


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know I said I was going to update once I had art, but I....did NOT anticipate how busy my current class was going to keep me, and I don't want to leave anybody hanging. So here's chapter two, with art...TBD? I have at the very least a sketch for it, I promise.

Jester sprinted until she left behind the fancier buildings and could be sure that nobody she knew would see her. Her own neighborhood, she knew, was full of wealthy people. Once the houses that lined the streets gained more sedate colors and never went above two stories, then it was safe.  _ Then _ she slowed down, sweating and panting and gawking at everything around her.

She’d never run so fast, never had the space to go so far, except for when she was out in the city. And the wind was still coming from the sea; all she had to do to find the right way was turn her face so that her hair was blown back and the chain that connected her horn cap to her earring jingled merrily in her ear. 

The main road of Nicodranas was somewhat familiar to Jester - she’d been down it before. Running wasn’t much of an option on it unless she wanted to be constantly pushing people out of her way. But the people were always different, and sometimes the shops changed too. Usually the main road was where she lingered, looking in all the windows and watching everybody who passed by.

Her favorite bakery, the Baker’s Dozen, the one that made such sweet bear claws, was open. The racks in the front window were full of breads and pastries, and a heavenly smell was drifting out of its doors. Jester lingered in the street, oh so tempted, but the sea, the sea, the sea!

She started running down the road again. 

By the time her legs began to ache too much for her to go any farther, she was only halfway to the shore. Jester fell to the ground, her butt hitting the grass with an uncomfortable bump. Jester sat there, breathing hard, considering the feel of the grass. It had been a long time since she’d last been outside.  

She had stopped in a part of town where the homes looked very plain, and a lot of them needed to be fixed. Peeling paint featured extensively, and lopsided windows or doors were more common than well-made ones. On Jester’s other side a wide expanse of grass stretched out, and on the muddy expanse stood a huge midnight-blue tent. Jester stared up at it, then forced herself back to her feet to go see what the people standing near the tent’s entrance were doing. 

The thinner figure standing by the tent’s entrance looked up and smiled as she came closer. He was a tiefling, like her, which made Jester excited. She’d seen almost none so far on this outing, which disappointed her. But now she knew she couldn’t be the only one left in Nicodranas! He was purple, though, and his horns fairly glittered with decoration. It didn’t look like real gold, and the gems didn’t shine like the ones in her mother’s jewelry. But it was his coat that Jester liked. It was so heavily and intricately embroidered that she almost missed where the handle of the sword stuck out.

“Hail and well met, fair lady!” The tiefling said. The woman standing next to him, tall and pale, looked down at Jester. Her heavy makeup made her look disapproving. “Care to take a gander at Fletching and Moondrop’s Traveling Carnival of Curiosities?”

“Is that what this is?” Jester asked.

“But of course!” The tiefling spread his hands to gesture grandly. “No finer show in the land, let me assure you. We’ve received acclaim across the Empire and the Southern Territories. And the show, oh, the show! Wonders and marvels abound, dear lady.”

“My name’s Jester,” Jester said, feeling a faint blush steal across her cheeks nonetheless. The tiefling was very flirty. He didn’t look very reputable, though. He looked a bit like the cover of a book she’d hid from Ofelia out of embarrassment, with his shirt open almost down to his bellybutton. But the man on the cover of Tusk Love didn’t have so many scars or tattoos. A snake hissed, mouth wide, on his hand, and a peacock curled around his ear, half hidden by his horn. 

“Jester,” the tiefling said, with a wide smile. His teeth were almost as sharp as Jester’s. “Well, my name is Mollymauk, just Molly to my friends. You are, of  _ course _ , free to call me Molly.”

“Molly is a nice name!” Jester stuck out her hand, and Molly pumped it energetically. “What are the shows like?”

“Buy a ticket and find out,” Molly said, still grinning. He held up his hand over his shoulder, and the woman gave him a flier from a stack she held, which he passed to Jester. “Only five copper! An absolute steal.”

Jester looked at the flyer. It was very fancy, to the point where the name of the carnival was difficult to read. It didn’t seem to tell her much more than Molly had. It did say that no elderly or ill people were permitted to attend, but she was neither of those.

“Five  _ copper?”  _ Jester asked, just to make sure she’d heard right. That seemed suspiciously cheap. 

“A steal, as I told you!” Molly rushed to defend his price. “For a night like this? Five silver would be closer to a just price. But we do have to make...a living...” He faltered as Jester dug out a gold piece and pressed it into his hand.

“Save me a seat,” she told him. “I have to go to the ocean first.” The need still filled her chest and made her legs tremble with the urge to run.

“New to Nicodranas?” Molly recovered with admirable speed, tucking the gold piece into an inside pocket with equal quickness. 

“No!” Jester grinned. “I’ve lived here my whole life!” And despite the shakiness in her leg muscles she rushed off again. The scent of the sea was in the air, and she had the flier for a carnival in her hand. 

 

The port was boring.

Jester had found it easily enough. It was the first thing to see at the end of Nicodranas’ main road, and she’d found it many times before. It was also very noisy, and busy, and nobody liked her just standing around and watching them. Jester thought some of them looked a little wary of her, but she didn’t know why they would be. She wasn’t dangerous. Except to bad people. 

She sat around at the port and watched people, despite the looks, because she’d learned from before what people would and wouldn’t tolerate. As long as she was quiet and kept out of the way, she could stay there all day if she wanted. And she liked to people-watch, so she often went down to the port when she snuck out of the house. The docks had the most interesting sorts, and usually the most tieflings (which meant one or two, really). Some of them had struck up conversations with Jester before, which was fun, but she rarely saw them more than once.

Some of the noise was from people singing, which Jester liked. Dockhands and deckhands pulled in ships and tied off ropes to the rhythm of their songs, some of which were definitely more bawdy than Jester had ever been led to believe they were. She had been in for a lot of surprises the first time she’d snuck out. Now she knew the words to most of them.

Jester was sitting on the edge of a lesser-used dock. It was low to the water, serving the regular handful of smaller boats with shallower hulls. It was close enough to the surface of the water that Jester could dip her now-bare feet in. The water was cold, and it rose and fall with the pattern of the waves and the movement of the big tall-masted ships that came in and out of the port. The horizon was wide, and the sky was almost as blue as the water, and-

And there was something in the water.

Jester yanked her feet up and out. There were monsters in the ocean, was her first thought, her mind going to all the pirate books and seafaring thrillers she’d read. But in the next second she felt silly. There wouldn’t be a monster in a place as busy as this. Someone would have noticed. 

Careless of the wet footprints she was now leaving on the wooden dock, Jester shuffled around and knelt so she could look over the edge of the dock. The greenish water rippled gently under her gaze.

There  _ had  _ been something. She was sure of it. But maybe it had gone away when she’d taken her feet out. 

Jester leaned further down, and then jerked back when the thing came up close enough to be visible.

It was a seal. It looked up at her with big, dark eyes. Jester could see a spattering of white covering its nose and going down past its underbelly. 

“Oh,” Jester gasped. The seal was maybe half a foot underwater. It was bobbing with the waves, always looking up at her. “It’s you!”

She had seen this seal before. She had spotted him the very first time she’d gone to the docks, and he’d shown up regularly ever since. Always alone, and always popping up close to where she was. Given that she’d been much younger the first time she snuck out of her room, it had seemed obvious to Jester then that the right thing to do was talk to him. 

“How have you been?” Jester asked the seal. He blinked at her. “I know it’s been a long time. I never had a good reason to come until now. It’s been a really bad day for me.” She always felt a little silly, talking to a seal, but nobody ever paid much attention to her when there was work to do.

The seal barked gently. He never had much more than that to contribute to a conversation, but Jester appreciated his efforts. 

“Oh, yes? Well, I hope you have had a better day than me.” Jester put her chin in her hands. “I bet you’ve had lots of fish. That would be good for you, probably.” 

“Excuse me,” called a girl, who was sitting in the prow of a much smaller boat which was piled high with nets and baskets. Jester’s head jerked up. “We usually moor there.”

“Oh, sorry!” Jester scrambled out of the way. The girl leaped out of the boat onto the dock as soon as she got close enough and started pulling it in with a length of rope. An older man who looked kind of similar to her was also sitting in the boat, throwing another rope around one of the dock posts and typing it off tightly as the girl drew in the boat’s prow. 

Jester moved around the boat, trying to get a good look at the water again. But the seal had vanished. She couldn’t see his dark head anywhere, not even a shadowy shape below the surface. 

Jester hung around the docks, walking here and there to try and spot the seal again. She couldn’t see much of the water past all the jolly boats and boardwalks. There were small rocks near the edge of the harbor where seals sometimes gathered, but when she went to look, none of the handful gathered on them for a rest were the right one. 

With all the noise the sailors and dockhands were making, Jester thought dejectedly, it would be a miracle if he came anywhere near the ships again. She had always thought that wild animals were supposed to be shy of humans. The seal had proved her wrong before, but maybe he’d gotten tired of always coming to the dirty noisy port to see her. 

Jester turned her feet back towards the road. If she couldn’t find the seal, maybe she could find somewhere a little quieter.

 

When the dirt road under her feet turned into sand, Jester laughed and threw herself down upon the ground. The back of her dress was already dirty; it didn’t matter if sand got on it. 

The sand was hotter than she’d expected. Jester curled her knees up to her chest so her bare skin didn’t lie against it. The sea crashed against the shore the same way it always did, and the rocks that the water splashed up against were maybe just the littlest bit smaller than last time. They crowded up against the water, backed by sprays of foam from the waves. Jester could see - and knew from experience - that they were slick with moisture, and covered in moss or some kind of plant. The beach was a lot more than just sand. She hadn’t expected that, the first time she found the cove.

She could see the masts of ships sailing out to sea, past the narrow mouth of the cove that the rocks formed. The ground that wasn’t sand didn’t curve down to the water as much as it did in the port, but marched out into the ocean as worn-smooth stone, curving around to  _ almost  _ meet the other side. Jester had always figured ships couldn’t get into the little cove, since it was too shallow and too small. She liked it that way. It made the cove her own little private space.

It was private from the land side, too. The road to get there was small and half overgrown with thistles and briar patches. She’d discovered it by accident and the Traveler’s hints, years ago, and always made a point of coming back.

Jester was still thinking of the seal. She pulled her bag into her lap and got her sketchbook and a pencil out of it. She’d never tried to draw a seal before, even though she thought of the one she considered ‘her seal’ a lot, but it couldn’t be that hard. 

Ten minutes of frustrated effort proved her wrong. Irritated, Jester flipped to a clean page. If only she had a proper reference, she was sure she could do a good job.

The seal had had a very round head, and big dark eyes. Okay. She could do that. Jester had seen illustrations of them before, so she knew what the rest of their bodies looked like, mostly. They had flippers, definitely. And big tails?

Now that she thought about it, Jester didn’t own that many books about seals. She had plenty that mentioned selkies; they were a popular topic in a seaside city like Nicodranas. And she was sure she’d seen more than one illustration of seals and people, and heard stories and songs about them. Absentmindedly, while trying to get the curve of a flipper right, Jester started singing under her breath. 

“Just before the stroke of midnight, they have made it back to sea...and she’s donned the magic hmm coat, to become hm hm hm hmm...” Jester still couldn’t remember the next verse all the way through, but that didn’t matter. 

She sat there, drawing under the sunny sky, until she got so hot that she couldn’t ignore the feeling anymore. There wasn’t any shade nearby, either.

Jester eyed the sea. She’d swum a little before, but only a little. Her bathtub wasn’t big enough to practice in, and she’d never been brave to try for real in the cove. But she was also really hot, and she knew the water was cool; plus the waves were calmer than usual. Maybe she could go in just a little. 

Just in case, Jester left her bag on the beach, emptying out her pockets and shimmying out of her bodice and overskirt. It wouldn’t do to get those all wet, even if the armpits of the bodice were all sweaty and gross already. 

Hiking up her petticoat around her waist, Jester tested the water with one bare foot. It was cool to the touch, that was for sure. A wave washed up around her feet, and Jester shrieked at the sudden cold, taking several rapid steps back. The shriek turned into a laugh readily enough, though. She braced herself, and planted both feet in the water. 

It was  _ very  _ cold, colder than it had any right to be in the middle of summer. The sand underneath the water was pebbly. Jester stepped carefully, avoiding the clumps of seaweed that drifted in the currents and wincing from the stones that littered the sand underwater. Rocks hidden in beach sand should be illegal. 

Once she got far enough out that the water was lapping at her knees, Jester pulled her petticoat up and tucked it into its own waistband so she didn’t have to keep holding it. She knew from experience that it wouldn’t stay like that for long, but she’d waded before, and had learned how to fix it in place as best she could. Free hands were worth the occasional soaked petticoat. 

Jester splashed water over her shoulders, trying to take away the worst of the heat still beating down on her back. Was this what it was like all the time outside? She couldn’t imagine how people stood it. Farmers and people like that had to work outside all  _ day,  _ and the sun was out  _ all day.  _ It was beginning to make sense why people got sunburns.

...Should  _ she  _ be worried about sunburns? She never thought of that  _ before  _ leaving the house. It would serve her right, getting burned and giving away her game after years of being all sneaky about it. 

Jester looked around, and spotted an outcrop of rock that cast a thin shadow over a smaller one below. It was further towards the opening of the cove, but if she climbed over some of the big rocks at the edge of the beach, she could probably get over to it. Newly determined, Jester waded back to the beach. Walking over to the rocks meant she got a lot of sand stuck to her feet. But she got up on the rocks despite how slippery they were, and got her chemise and petticoat pretty wet in the process. Streaks of greyish green marked themselves on her hands and her clothes as she clambered up over the overgrown rocks, and Jester grimaced to see it. Nature was kind of gross up close.

She was halfway across the rocks, moving carefully, when the seal head broke the surface of the water.

Jester stopped dead when she noticed it. It wasn’t the same seal as before - there was no spatter of white down its neck, only a few lighter spots here and there. But it was looking at her just the same. 

“Hello,” Jester whispered. The seal blinked, and then ducked back under the water. Jester slipped into the dip between two rocks as she moved closer, straining again to see where it had gone. But the ocean was dense; she couldn’t see all the way to the bottom. 

Vague shapes flickered deep in the ocean. Jester leaned out a little further, cautious of her precarious position. She dug her fingers deep into the moss and the crags of the rock. But no seals revealed themselves. 

A cloud had passed over the sun for a moment, but then it passed away. Jester winced as the sunlight suddenly struck her face, and unthinkingly raised a hand to shade herself.

Her other hand slipped.

Jester grabbed at the rock as she fell, but it slipped. There were rocks under the water too, she discovered when she hit them. They were  _ really  _ hard. She kicked, trying to get back up to the surface, and gasped reflexively when her foot caught on something sharp. 

That had been a bad idea. Water rushed into her mouth. Jester would have coughed if she’d had air to cough out. She thrashed, reaching desperately for the surface, and hit something hard instead.

It was...too soft to be a rock.

Jester’s head broke the surface for a moment. She retched, scrabbling against the hard thing she’d hit and finding a handhold. It was only just small enough for her to get her arms around it in a firm grip. Jester breathed in deeply, and then coughed again. Water was still stuck in her throat, and her whole mouth tasted of salt. She blinked furiously, and caught a glimpse of water and a smooth greyish thing just as whatever she was holding onto started moving.

Jester realized what she was holding onto when it twisted in her grip, and the bristly ends of wet fur poked into her arms and hands. Water was still running into her eyes, and she didn’t dare let go to brush her hair away. Only when her feet skimmed the bottom did Jester feel safe enough to take one hand away and shove her soaked bangs out of her face. 

Her whole face felt tight with the salt of the seawater, which was drying out quick in the sun. Trickles of it kept winding down from her hair. Jester stood, uncertain of her footing, and found that she was still waist-deep, and her foot  _ really  _ hurt. The seal had stopped when she moved, but now he swam a little further forward.

Stumbling, Jester let herself be guided towards the shore. Hopping around the seaweed was an endeavor. It didn’t occur to her to be weirded out about the helpful seal until she was sitting on the shore, taking great heaving breaths and getting sand all over herself. She grimaced when she saw that her foot was bleeding, and took pains to keep it off the ground.

“Thank you,” she told the seal. “I - oh!” She’d looked up towards where it had been sitting, except there was no seal there anymore. 

A green face peeked out at her from inside the folds of a wet, furry robe. The eyes that studied her were not dark, but yellow, with narrow pupils. Jester gaped, unable to process what she was seeing.

The man shifted, uncurling his legs. A pair of bare green feet peeked out from under the tail flippers of his robe.

“You’ve never fallen before,” he said. His voice was resonant, not deep but very close. “Are you alright?”

“You have pants,” Jester blurted out, because she could indeed see the hem of pants riding too high above his ankle. 

“...Yes?” The man looked down at his pants, then back up at her. His green face was speckled with a lighter, yellower shade, covering the bottom half of his face and trailing down his neck and out of sight. Just like the seal, Jester thought in amazement. She could still see the pattern of white markings on the robe.

“You’re  _ real,”  _ she said, just to make sure.

“I am,” the selkie said.  _ “Are _ you alright?”

“I think so,” Jester said, “unless I died and this is a dream.”

“Why would it be a dream?”

“Because I thought selkies weren’t real.” Jester stared at him, entranced. “I thought selkies turned into humans when they weren’t seals.”

The man lifted one arm, the fur coat falling away from it. He was wearing a shirt, too, though it was soaking wet and didn’t hide the green color of his arm. He studied his arm, turning it over.

“Should I be human?” He said. “You’re not.”

“I don’t mind that you’re not,” Jester said. “I think it’s nice.”

“Well, thank you for that.”

“Is that why you always come to see me at the docks?” Jester demanded. “Because you’re a selkie?”

The man blinked at her. “I suppose,” he said. “Regular seals don’t usually like going so close to so many humans. How come you’re there so rarely?”

“I just go there when I can,” Jester said. The full story was very complicated, and the selkie probably didn’t want to hear it.

“Oh.” The selkie looked disappointed. “I thought you worked there.”

Jester laughed, which turned quickly into a bout of coughing. The selkie reached out a green hand to touch her shoulder, concern lining his face. Jester shook her head, eventually mastering her breath again.

“I just go when I can,” she said again. “I like to look at people. And there’s this seal that always visits me that’s very nice.” She stuck her hand out. “I’m Jester. But I think I probably told you that already.”

“Jester.” The selkie’s voice was warm as a fresh pastry. His hand was cold from the water, but so was hers, and he gripped hers firmly. “I’m Fjord.”

“Fjord,” Jester repeated. She liked to sound out people’s names, and Fjord’s fit nicely in her mouth. “You saved me,” she realized.

“Of course.” Fjord’s other hand was still on her shoulder. He seemed to realize this, and let go quickly. “I couldn’t let you drown.” He glanced back at the water. Jester did, too. Several other seals were bobbing near the entrance of the cove, looking towards where the two of them sat. “I...should go. Let them know everything’s alright.”

“Oh.” Jester stifled a pang of disappointment. Of course he had to go. Selkies never stayed long in the stories. “Will I see you again?”

Fjord had been wrapping the robe around himself again, but he paused when Jester asked. His eyes were not as dark anymore, but they held the same earnestness when he looked at her.

“Come back here tomorrow,” he said. “I’ll be here.” Then he walked back into the water. 

Jester couldn’t pinpoint the exact moment when he stopped being humanoid-Fjord and the coat smoothed him back into the round shape of seal-Fjord. She stood up, intending to try and spot him among the waves, but her foot pulsed with pain and she had to take that one off the ground and wobble. Still, as the seals at the entrance of the cove ducked out of sight, one with a white spot on his forehead and down its neck surfaced, and looked back towards shore.

Jester waved wildly until the last seal vanished back underwater.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And now, we have the selkie part...were you expecting it to be anyone else, really?


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn't realize how long it had been - I've been trying not to post these chapters too quickly, but if I'm going to add the art later, why not?
> 
> Anyway, I'll probably save the next couple for when my class is inevitably going to keep me too busy to update other stuff I'm still writing, so enjoy!

It was a struggle to get back inside her room, with her foot the way it was. Luckily Jester’s shoes had not been damaged, because she’d been barefoot, but her underclothes didn’t dry out as much as she would have liked on the walk back. She’d had to put her other things back on top, for propriety’s sake. 

Climbing would have been terrible, too, and it was only the prospect of doing so that made Jester remember her own talent for healing magic. Her Blessing let her go quietly and slowly, and soon she was hauling herself back through the window.

Jester wished she could just collapse into her bed, but there were things that needed to be done. The bag she’d taken, she just stuffed under the chaise. Her clothes were another matter. She shoved her shoes, full of sand inside from her feet, under the chaise too, and then gathered herself up and went into the bathroom to run a bath. 

There came a knock at her door only after Jester had managed to brush the worst of the dirt and sand off her dress, and re-soaked her underthings to get the grime and salt off them. She sat for a moment, frozen, and then yelled, “Sorry I’m in a bath!”

“Oh, alright!” It was Ofelia’s voice. “You’ve been locked in for a while, though. I thought I’d check in on you.”

“I’m okay!” Jester thought the selkie probably balanced out at least a few of the other things that had happened to her today. 

“Good! Don’t forget your birthday dinner is still tonight.”

“Okay!” Shit, she  _ had  _ forgotten. It was lucky she’d come back so early. And, Jester realized with a pang, she’d forgotten about the carnival. She rushed to get out of the tub, peeling off her soaking clothes and snatching up a fluffy towel. The flier was still in her bag. If they were performing for more than one night, it had to say so. 

The fancy, curly script of the words on the flyer was still difficult to read. But it did list three days that the carnival was performing in Nicodranas, and the first of them was still in progress. Jester was going to go back down to the cove tomorrow, anyway; she could go late at night and see the carnival, too!

It would be fun!

 

Jester’s birthday dinner was the same as the last eighteen she’d had (well, probably. She could only remember so far back). As a treat for her, it was held in the second-floor dining room, which was the second smallest according to Ofelia. Ofelia was there, of course, sitting at Jester’s right hand - because, also of course, Jester got to sit at the head of the table for the day. 

Jester couldn’t concentrate on any of it, not even the blueberry cake. Her mind kept drifting back to Fjord. Even the pile of wrapped presents arranged on her bed when she came back didn’t immediately grab her attention. She drifted over to the window, which somebody had closed while she was out, and opened it. She leaned out as far as she dared, trying to catch the smell of the sea. But the wind was coming from the north, and all it brought was a faint chill. The evening light made the distant waves gleam gold. Jester strained her eyes, but her window faced the wrong way. She couldn’t even see the main road, much less her little cove.

Jester sat back on her heels, but stayed at the window a moment longer. She wondered what Fjord was doing. Probably he was swimming around with all his seal friends. Or his selkie friends! Maybe he was telling them about the pretty tiefling he’d saved. He didn’t seem the type to brag about it. He’d been so humble when she’d brought it up. 

Jester wished she knew how to swim. Maybe Fjord could teach her tomorrow. Tomorrow couldn’t come quickly enough for her. She’d never in her life wished for her birthday to be over quicker, but she was wishing now.

...Oh, right, she had presents!

Jester opened the wrapping paper carefully. She liked to save the paper and make things out of it. The little mobile of paper cranes which dangled next to her bed was a testament to the long hours she’d spent practicing. 

The largest gift was an intricately carved wooden chest; empty, but beautiful. On the lid was a rayed sun, and the edges were rolling waves. The sides of the box plunged under the surface of the water, showing plants waving in an invisible current. Jester ran her hands over the smooth, shallow relief, marveling at the artistry. There were no animals, though, which was a shame. She turned it over to check, but the bottom was blank. Probably because it wouldn’t be seen, when the box was set down somewhere. 

The other presents were practically made to fit inside it. Most of them were smaller, and softer. There were two soft nightgowns, one of them a deep blue, and a sillky blue-green robe. There was the requisite handful of books, some of them random, some of them sequels to ones Jester had already read. Jester got immediately absorbed in one of them, and she was reading it, sprawled across her bed on top of the nightgowns and with the chest bumping against her legs, when Ofelia opened the door.

“I see you’re feeling better,” Ofelia said, coming to sit on the end of the bed. Unlike earlier, she was wearing her work clothes now, which were deep red and only revealing enough to leave a slit up the leg of the skirt and not go over the shoulders. Jester’s mother often said that she didn’t want to distract from the main show. “Did you get distracted from the rest of these?” She gestured to the handful of still-wrapped packages.

“It’s a very good book,” Jester said without looking away. The cover had a beautiful woman with flowing hair on it, but the leading lady was busy complaining about her average looks. 

“Do you mind if I talk to you?”

Jester reluctantly put down her book. “Is this about earlier?”

“Well, a little, but I also need a chess partner. Adem’s busy in the kitchen, cleaning up.” Ofelia held up a foldable board. The pieces inside rattled around. “Can you spare an hour or so?”

“I guess,” Jester grumbled. She got up to move to the little table that occupied one corner of her room. Ofelia followed, and began to set out the pieces as Jester sat. “Did my mom tell you to talk to me?”

“She’s not back yet,” Ofelia said, straightening a line of pawns. “And when she does get back, she’ll probably be busy ‘til morning. White or black?”

“Black,” Jester said. She always played black. Once someone on the streets of Nicodranas had told her that her eyes should be black, like her blood. She wasn’t sure if it was better or worse that it had come from a tiefling, whose eyes were black as oil with thin irises of greenish yellow. “Why does she want me to get married?”

“Because she cares for you a lot,” Ofelia said. She moved out a pawn. Jester copied what she did, because that usually got her through the first few rounds at least. “It may not seem like that, I know. When I picture getting married it’s not to someone I barely know. But that’s not what she’s going to do to you.”

“What’s she going to do?”

“Haven’t you read enough books that you know how courting works?” Ofelia cracked a smile. “I’m sure there will be months of figuring out who fits with you best, and months after that of you two getting to know each other while the smaller details are worked out between your mother and his family.”

“But what if I don’t like any of them?” Jester asked. She did not smile.

“There are a lot of prigs in Nicodranas, but not  _ that  _ many.”

“What if I don’t want a nice boy?”

“Then your mother will find you a nice lady. Honestly, if the family’s not bothered by the horns, I doubt they’ll be bothered by your gender.”

Jester sulked. She’d been hoping for a good reason to dramatically object, but Ofelia was being reasonable like always. She was way too sensible for her age, and she was only a couple years older than Jester. 

“I think you’re lucky,” Ofelia said. “Your mom knows a lot of really important people, there’s no way you won’t end up with someone who can’t furnish you with at least a full library. And your mother’s not badly off either. I’ve been working on my trousseau for ages, and I still don’t have much of anything.”

“Don’t you ever get bored of that?” Jester asked. She snuck a glance at the elaborate wooden chest, wondering for a moment if it was meant to be a hope chest. But none of the presents had been things that went in hope chests, except maybe the nightgowns or the robe. 

“Well, it partly takes so long because I don’t have much free time, and a lot of days I’m too tired for embroidery.” Ofelia moved a bishop. “Check.”

Jester frowned at the board. Usually she lasted a  _ little  _ longer than that. She moved the king out of the way, nearly knocking over the neighboring knight. “What if I don’t want to get married?”

“What happened to the three days rule?”

“That’s still true,” Jester said swiftly. “But what if I don’t?”

“At worst? You endure the ceremony with someone you don’t hate, tell them you’ve got a headache that night, and visit home often.” Ofelia winked. “And if I have any say in the matter, I’m probably going with you.”

“Really?” Jester’s heart twisted painfully.

“Sure. I can be one half of your dowry or something. Or a permanent bridesmaid.” Ofelia swapped her king and castle, which seemed like a bullshit fake move to Jester, but Ofelia was the only reason she knew the rules of chess in the first place so it was  _ maybe  _ real. “Did you think you were going to be thrown out into the world alone?”

“You never said I  _ wouldn’t  _ be,” Jester said. She moved a bishop as far as it could go.

“Fair enough.” Ofelia captured the bishop with a pawn. “Are you still hard and fast on the three days rule?”

“Yes,” Jester said. Ofelia had soothed the wound, but she still didn’t want to marry some lordling and be stuck in another fancy house forever. Rich people’s wives never did anything interesting; they just sat around and embroidered. They never ran down the main street of Nicodranas or watched the sailors at the port or bought pastries fresh from the oven at the Baker’s Dozen.

“Well, when your mother’s free, I’ll let her know.” Ofelia moved her queen to the center of the board. “Checkmate.”

“I thought you said this would take at least an hour,” Jester complained. 

“Do you want to play a different game?”

“No.” Jester slumped down in her chair. “Ofelia, do you think I could learn to swim?”

“What for?” Ofelia seemed genuinely surprised.

“I live next to the sea and I don’t know how to swim.”

“But you’ve never been-” Ofelia checked her words. “We don’t exactly have a swimming pool in the house. But I’ll see. Maybe your mother will get a big pond installed in the backyard.”

“Thank you.”

“Is mom going to sing tonight when she comes back?”

“Maybe.”

“Will you sneak me down to listen?”

Ofelia smiled. “Just this once.” She said that every time. Ofelia knew the house better than anyone. The servants, except for the maids of all work, generally kept to one floor or kind of room; Ofelia went everywhere, doing whatever Jester’s mother needed her to do.

A knock at the door interrupted them. A liveried servant - one of the first-floor women, then - peeked a head in through the door.

“Marian wants you, Ofelia,” she whispered apologetically. Ofelia nodded, rising without gathering up the chessboard.

“I’ll come back for this later, Jester,” she said. “We can talk some more then, if you’re still awake.”

“I will see,” Jester said solemnly. Ofelia giggled as she swept out, and the door clicked shut behind her.

 

Ofelia came to Jester’s door much later, breathing heavily like she’d run the whole way. Used to the routine, Jester let Ofelia pull her quickly down the hall and into the door which appeared to hide a closet. Behind the false back of the closet, a dusty spiral staircase wound downwards.

The house that Jester lived in was very old. Her room used to be the attic, and it, the bathroom, and the room across the hall where she was allowed to go to exercise were the only real rooms in it aside from a couple closets and the hallway. The spiral staircase was the victim of one of the many phases of remodeling that had been inflicted upon the ancient structure over the years. The bottom of it was a bricked-up doorway, but sound could still come through it. Jester only had to get halfway down before the faint notes of her mother’s voice were drifting up to her. 

She went farther down than that, of course. She didn’t do this just for a seat at the very back of the metaphorical audience.

Everyone was always silent when her mother sang. The little shuffles of someone readjusting how they were sitting didn’t make it through the wall, but there were no louder noises - no one ever dared cough or sniffle when the Ruby of the Sea was singing. People barely dared breathe. People was mostly Jester in that instance, but she thought that was probably a truthful statement still.

She could hear her mother singing her usual song for the really rich clients, the ones who fancied themselves adventurers. It was in Elvish, but Jester knew what it said - she’d had Ofelia find her the lyrics in Common.

_ “This man of whom I speak, _

_ He gave his life for me, _

_ But thence my soul grew weak _

_ And at last it too broke free. _

_ So borne upon an urgent breeze, _

_ I travelled to this place. _

_ Where only one thing could appease _

_ The torment I now face.” _

Jester curled her knees up to her chest and stared into the darkness, bending her whole head to listen better. Her mother’s voice, she thought, was more beautiful than anything else about her. 

 

Jester slept so deeply that night, after being hurried back into her room, that when she woke up it was well past breakfast time. She instantly sprang out of bed, thinking that she had to meet Fjord - but that was silly, she realized in the next moment, because she had all day. Even the carnival wasn’t until late at night. Wasn’t it? Jester dug the flier out of her bag, just to be sure. It said, as clear as the font on the flier allowed for, that their performances started at sundown. So she  _ could _ go to see Fjord and the carnival!

Finding her bag again reminded Jester that her shoes were still under the chaise, and still full of sand. She upturned them over the windowsill while the thought about what she was going to do. She had to go see Fjord, of course, but she couldn’t risk sneaking out twice in one day, not so soon after the last time. If she wanted to go to the carnival, she’d have to go see Fjord just before, and do both errands in one go. 

Yes, that would do it. She’d leave after dinner. It would be risky - the later it got in the day, the busier her mother, and by extension the lower floors of the house, got. But she had her Blessing and the Traveler. She could make it. 

 

The day dragged  _ on  _ and  _ on.  _ Jester was scolded by her tutor for having her head in the clouds, and couldn’t concentrate on the scolding either. Her new books could not trap her wandering mind in them. Jester kept wondering what Fjord would think of them. Her tutor did not return that afternoon for singing lessons, so Jester sang to herself, but she kept forgetting the words when she tried to turn the songs into sea shanties. She didn’t dare sing any of  _ those  _ she knew. Someone might hear her and wonder where she learned them. And they were a little too bawdy even for her mother’s house - her mother was classier than sailor’s songs, despite her title.

By the time someone brought dinner up to her, Jester had resorted to nervous pacing loud enough that a different servant had taken her across the hall to work off her energy, and after that she’d crashed and taken a nap. Only the knock at her door and the smell of food roused her. Jester was jittery enough once she was properly awake that she could have flown out the window instead of climbed, and soared all the way to the shore without stopping. 

 

Jester almost got herself caught, when she did make her attempt at sneaking out again. The first floor was busier than she’d anticipated, and then she slipped six feet above the ground and fell the rest of the way. But she escaped past the neighbors’ tall border of trees before anyone saw her, and nobody stopped her as the raced down the wide roads of downtown Nicodranas. 

The wind in her hair felt marvelous, and her feet were fleeter than ever. Jester bypassed the port without even considering stopping. She tore down the little path that led to the cove, leaping over roots that had forced their way through the dirt. The sun was just barely beginning to inch down towards the horizon, falling from its noon height. 

A seal’s head popped above the water as soon as Jester’s boots hit the sand. Jester saw the white spot on its head, and waved both hands over her head, skidding to a halt before she hit the water. The seal vanished, but a moment later Fjord stepped out of an unusually tall cresting wave. The wave splashed up towards Jester’s shoes as it hit the shore. It felt like it was reaching for her.

Jester started taking her shoes off.

“You came,” Fjord said, sounding pleased. “I was beginning to think you wouldn’t.” His humanoid shape was more visible when he was standing. Jester could see that his shirt was properly white, not just very faded, and his pants looked skin-tight only because of how the water made them cling. She took a moment to admire his legs. 

“Of course I came, you said you would be here.” Jester tossed her shoes aside and wriggled her toes in the sand. “I had to come late so I could also go see the carnival tonight and I can’t sneak out of my room twice in  _ one day.” _

“Sneak out?” Fjord’s forehead wrinkled in puzzlement. “Why d’you need to sneak out?”

“My mom doesn’t like me to leave my room. Much less the  _ house.”  _ Jester giggled. “But I can climb down the back wall and leave sometimes. That’s why I’m not at the docks a lot. I only go there when I leave.”

“That doesn’t sound right.”

Jester hesitated. “Well...I mean, she doesn’t do it just for kicks.” She knew that much.

“But how are you gonna learn the things you need to know in life? Like fending for yourself, and swimming?”

“Well, my mom is rich, and I think rich people usually just hire other people to do those things for them,” Jester said. “And I actually don’t know how to swim but most rich people don’t bother with the ocean except to sail.”

“Don’t know how to  _ swim,”  _ Fjord repeated, and shook his head. “That ain’t right either.” 

“Well, maybe you could teach me.”

There was a moment where Fjord simply sized her up, and Jester was afraid he might say no, or that she would never be able to learn. But he extended a hand to her and said, “Sure. Come on in.”

“I can’t go in in my  _ clothes,  _ silly. Turn the other way.”

“What for?”

“So I can change! Turn around!”

Fjord politely turned his back to Jester. Jester made short work of stripping off her dress, this time both petticoats too. She balanced the wadded-up clothes carefully on top of her shoes and her bag, so that no sand would get in them again. She didn’t need to shake sand out of everything two days in a row, too. There was still sand in them from  _ last  _ time.

“Okay, I’m good!” Jester splashed out to where Fjord was standing, knee-deep in water. He turned around, and looked entirely unbothered by the fact that she was in nothing but a chemise.

“Why’d I have to turn around?” He asked.

“So I could have privacy. You’re not supposed to watch a lady undress.”

“But I can see you once you  _ are  _ undressed?”

“If he pays for it, a man can see you any way he pays for. Even naked,” Jester said cheekily, and grinned when Fjord flushed. “Or if you just want to let him, that’s okay too. And I don’t want to get my clothes all wet.” 

“Very well,” Fjord said quietly. He took her hand. “Let’s go out a little further, and you can stop me when it gets too deep for you.” 

 

Jester didn’t think she was very good at swimming. Deep seawater unnerved her, the way she couldn’t see the bottom where her feet sank into the sand. And she couldn’t hold her breath very long, as she shortly found out. Fjord got her to try opening her eyes while she was underwater and then they stung forever until she cast a healing spell on herself, which was when she put her foot down about going  _ all  _ the way underwater. Fjord did seem very apologetic about that, though.

But she could splash around pretty well, and she discovered that if she let it the water would hold her, lying on her back with her face above the surface as the waves gently rocked her. So by the time Fjord helped her swim over to a small shelf of rock near the entrance of the cove, where they could sit comfortably, she felt confident enough that she didn’t let him tow her the whole way and did a little real swimming. 

“Thank you for the lesson,” Jester said, feeling more soaked than she’d ever been in her life. She’d had her hair wet before, of course, but the saltwater felt more real, and it was in her hair and on her face and making her chemise cling to her body. Fjord was in the same situation, though he seemed entirely comfortable with it, and the selkie coat didn’t cling at all, just hung from his broad shoulders. 

“It wasn’t a problem at all,” Fjord said. “Once you get the hang of it, you’d be a good swimmer. You’ve got the legs for it.”

“Fjord!” Jester giggled, and pulled her chemise away from where it was sticking to her chest. It was a warm day out, and sunny, but the sun was going down. She hoped she’d have time to dry off.

“What? You’re very strong.”

“Oh.” He meant her muscles. Jester leaned in. “On land, complimenting someone’s legs means you think they’re pretty.”

“You are pretty.”

“Oh.” It was Jester’s turn to flush. Fjord said it like it was obvious. “Is  _ that  _ why you always come visit me when I’m at the docks?”

“Some of it was curiosity,” Fjord said. “I’d never seen someone so, well,  _ blue  _ on land before. For a moment, the first time, I thought it might be a trick of the light, the way it came through the water.”

“Does that happen a lot?” 

“Sometimes.” Fjord shrugged. “Usually not enough to make people blue.”

“Or horned,” Jester muttered.

“I’m sorry?”

“It’s nothing.” Jester mustered up a smile. “Only a lot of people don’t like tieflings in Nicodranas, is all.” 

Fjord studied her face. “Well, that doesn’t sound fair,” he said softly. “Is it very bad?”

“Well, I’m in my room a lot, so not really. It’s probably worse for people who go outside a lot.” Jester swung her legs back and forth, splashing her feet through the water. “Why did you keep coming to see me? Besides the blue?”

“I liked you,” Fjord said. “There’s not many who would talk to a seal when they don’t think he’s anything more than that.”

“Well, I like you too,” Jester declared. “Even if I’m not a fisher’s daughter, I can be friends with a selkie.”

“Fisher’s daughter? That’s specific.”

“Have you never heard the song?” Jester was surprised. “But it’s a selkie song!”

“Maybe I just don’t remember the bit you mean,” Fjord said.

“It’s right at the beginning!  _ Once a fair and handsome Seal Lord, Lay his foot upon the sand, For to woo the Fisher’s Daughter, and to claim her marriage hand, _ ” Jester sang. She looked at Fjord expectantly.

“Is that all?” Fjord asked.

“I said the part about the fisher’s daughter,” Jester pointed out. 

“Maybe you could sing a bit more?” Fjord suggested. “You have a nice voice.”

Jester flushed deeply. “Only sort of,” she said. “My mom is the one who can  _ really  _ sing. My voice is too low. She has the most beautiful voice, and people come from all over to hear her sing.”

“I like yours well enough,” Fjord said, “and your mother isn’t here. Would you?”

“Well, okay,” Jester said, with her cheeks on fire.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comment if you liked it - I had fun writing the romance of this. Also, you heard it here first: Jester sings in an alto range. 
> 
> The song Marian sings is Lúthien's Lament, by Eurielle - it's quite beautiful, and also on youtube!


	4. Discovery

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> New chapter! I'm...very glad I had these stored up, because NaNo prep is kicking my ass. 
> 
> This one gets a little serious, but I hope you like it anyway. What would a story be without conflict?

Jester and Fjord talked for a long time once she finished singing. Jester told him things she’d never told anyone before; about her mother, and about the things she loved to do, but also about the way she liked seeing her sickle flash in the light when she practiced and climbing down the wall and the pastries that came from Baker’s Dozen.

In exchange, Fjord gave her information about himself. Jester was delighted when he admitted that he, like the man in the song, was something of an important figure among the selkies much like a Seal Lord. He described his favorite places, far-off underwater coves full of diffused sunlight and plants and little fish that darted away at his arrival, or long sandy stretches were seals would congregate and play. He told her about the ways to hide when a shark was coming, or how to tell if a fisherman was in the right mood to have a handful of effortless fish coaxed from his net. 

Jester liked Fjord’s voice nearly as much as she liked the words it formed. Fjord seemed so magical, like the sea he lived in was a whole different world. Jester almost forgot to keep an eye on the time; only the darkness settling in around them reminded her that she had other places to be that night, too. 

“I’m sorry,” Jester said for the third time as she pulled her skirts back on. Her underthings would just have to dry slowly, and she’d have to bear their cling against her skin. “I already paid and asked them to save me a seat. I have to go sometime, or else they’ll just have my gold piece for no reason.” Never give away money, her mother had taught her. 

“I know,” Fjord said. “I just liked talking to you, is all.”

“I do to!” Jester reached up to pat his cheek. “I will come back when I can. It might not be for a while, though. I can’t risk three days in a row.”

“I understand,” Fjord said, though a shadow passed over his face at the mention of the risk she was taking. “I still think you should be free to see as much of the sea as you like.”

“Someday, I will be,” Jester said, and tried to tell herself it was true.

 

Twilight coated Nicodranas like a humid blanket as Jester reached the circus. The tent had no strings of fairy lights or strategic torches,, but light spilled out from the open flaps at the front, making it look cheerful despite the way its dark cloth blended in with the rapidly encroaching night. 

As Jester was running up, there was a commotion in the light. The tall, pale woman was bodily throwing a man away from the entrance. A smaller shape was scurrying into the shadows, but Jester didn’t notice it, too curious about the man. 

“Try that again and we’ll do worse than throwing!” Hollered Molly from where he was standing silhouetted in the entryway. The man picked himself up from the dirt, stumbling as he booked it away from the tent. “That’s what I thought, you fu - oh, hello again!” 

“Hi,” Jester said, beaming. Molly’s abrupt switch to friendliness when he spotted her was gratifying. He must have  _ really  _ liked her. “I’m sorry I forgot to come yesterday, but I’m here now!”

“I see that,” Molly said, appraising her wet hair. “Just on time, too, we’re about to start. There may still be space to squeeze you in in the front, if you’d like.”

“No, there isn’t,” the tall lady said. 

“Yasha, please.” Molly made a face at her, then turned back to Jester. “Alright, there probably isn’t, but I’ll find you someplace to sit. You’ve already paid for a seat ten times over, and you’re not elderly or ill - you’re not ill, are you?” Molly waited only a second for Jester to nod an affirmation. “So I’ll skip that part of the entry spiel and take you in, so long as you don’t have any weapons.”

“No - oh, wait, I have one weapon,” Jester said. “Just for safety, you know.”

“Couldn’t care less why,” Molly said breezily. “All that matters is that Yasha keeps all weapons on her own person for safekeeping during the show. You can have it back once you leave.”

“Do you promise to keep it safe?” Jester asked, looking up at the pale woman. Yasha blinked, and Jester noticed that her eyes were two different colors. 

“I always keep things safe,” Yasha said.

“But do you  _ promise?”  _ Jester held out her hand, pinky extended. Molly’s eyebrows rose. Yasha hesitated, half-raising one hand. Jester seized upon the opportunity and linked their pinkies, grinning broadly. “There! You promise!”

“Alright,” Yasha said, as Jester let go to dig through her bag and withdraw her sheathed sickle. She handed it over grandly, and Yasha took it as though it were made of glass. 

“Inward and onward, my lady,” Molly said grandly, hooking an arm around Jester’s and pulling her into the tent. She waved goodbye to Yasha before turning to confront the crowd inside.

It was a very  _ large  _ crowd. There was such a noise filling up the stuffy air, coming from all around her, that Jester had to pause and reorient herself. Even the main street of Nicodranas was never so crowded or loud.

“Easy does it,” Molly said, catching on to her hesitation. “I spy a seat on the edge, should you need to flee the tent. And look, you even match your neighbor.” He gave her a gentle shove towards an open seat, before turning to rejoin Yasha at the entrance.

Jester settled into the seat nervously, smoothing her skirts over her knees. Even in a big tent the color of the sky outside, she would have to sit politely, or else what was the point of learning so many manners like her mother wanted? She glanced at her neighbor as sneakily as she could manage. Molly was right about them matching; the human girl was wearing clothes all in similar shades of blue, though her loose robe was more green than Jester’s tastes leaned.

The girl caught her looking, too. She slid her own sideways look at Jester, and seemed surprised to find Jester looking back.

“What?” She bit out. 

“Nothing!” Jester said, startled. Maybe she should have thought a bit harder about her own species before committing herself to such a large crowd of strangers. “Um, hi!”

The girl eyed her warily. “...Hi?”

“I’m Jester!” Jester stuck out her hand.

“I’m...Beau.” The girl eyed her even more warily, and did not take her hand to shake it. She was holding her knees like she was trying to pry them off her legs for doing her a grievous wrong. Jester put down her hand.

“Have you ever been to the circus before?”

“When I was a kid,” Beau said. The intensity of her look didn’t waver, but wariness was beginning to be replaced by confusion.

“I’ve never been at  _ all,”  _ Jester said. “This is really exciting. Do you know what they usually do in circuses?”

“Probably there’ll be a clown,” Beau said, a grimace crossing her face. “And a fire-breather maybe.”

“A  _ fire-breather?  _ Wow.” Jester leaned out into the aisle to look around the rows of people in front of her, but the open arena in the center of the tent was still empty. “Have you ever been to  _ this  _ circus?”

“No, that’s why I’m here now,” Beau said. Her grip on her knees had loosened somewhat. 

“That’s a good point. I-”

A fiddle interrupted Jester, lilting and sweet. She turned and saw that the front entrance of the tent had been closed, and a man in elaborate facepaint had entered. His eyes were closed, his whole being utterly focused upon his fiddle. Entranced, Jester watched him and the plumy, satiny sleeves of his costume shirt as he proceeded slowly down the aisle, towards the open stage.

And then, the show  _ really  _ began.

Jester could not have possibly picked a favorite part of the circus’ performance. It was all so fantastic and beautiful, every part was her favorite. There was a fire-breather, just like Beau had promised, who juggled the flames as well and made shapes with them in the air. There was a different juggling pair, one of which Jester recognized as the tiefling who had showed her in, who tossed swords and clubs and torches back and forth in fantastic arcs like it was nothing. 

Jester actually grabbed Beau’s arm when the toadlike monster came in, scooting away from the sudden terrible presence. But as soon as the little girl started to sing he didn’t seem so scary anymore. Beau didn’t even try to extricate her arm from Jester’s grasp, equally entranced by the beautiful singing.

The whole thing, after a certain point, blurred in Jester’s memory into a whirl of delightfulness. When the music faded and the chatter of the audience swelled, it took a moment for Jester to process that that had been  _ it.  _ Beau stood, finally dislodging Jester’s grip, and the beautiful dream was broken. 

“‘Scuse me,” Beau said. Jester scooted away and stood in the aisle, casting a longing glance at the once-again-empty stage space as Beau shuffled out of her seat.

“I wish it were eight hours long,” Jester complained, following Beau as the human girl briskly strode out of the tent. “Oh, I want to be watching it all over again. Did you see, when the fire-breather made the letter A-”

“I was right next to you,” Beau said. She sounded confused, rather than irritable, like she really wasn’t sure if Jester already knew that or not. Beau then glanced back and forth, observing the mostly-empty street. “Do you see that tall lady anywhere?”

“Yasha?” Jester looked back and forth too. It was very dark outside, with a sprinkling of stars in the sky above and the moon beginning to properly rise. “Nope.”

“Her name’s Yasha?”

“That’s what Molly said.”

“Who’s Molly?”

“The purple guy, you know, he was out front before.”

“Oh.” Beau squinted at Jester for a moment. “Did you ask his name, or...?”

“No, we just knew each other’s names already,” Jester said. “It’s a tiefling thing. You probably couldn’t understand.”

Beau squinted harder. Only the sight of Yasha coming around the side of the tent, difficult to miss even in the dim light, distracted her from probing further. 

“Hey! You didn’t lose my stick, did you?” Beau brightened at the sight of Yasha, bounding over to meet her halfway.

“Your stick?” Jester questioned, following her. The tent flap opened to expel a few more patrons of the show, flashing light briefly over the street. 

“I didn’t,” Yasha said. She took a long staff, which had been hanging off her shoulder by the blue sash tied around it, and gave it to Beau. “If it’s scratched up, you can get a discount tomorrow night.”

“Not true in the least,” Molly said, materializing out of the darkness behind Yasha with a jangle of costume jewelry. “But Yasha will definitely feel a little bad about having scratched it.”

“It can handle a few scratches, it’s just wood,” Beau said, slinging the staff over her shoulder. “Thanks for holding onto it.”

“It’s literally my job.”

“What do you need a stick for?” Jester asked curiously.

“Cool monk shit,” Beau said.

“Oooh! I’ve never seen a monk before. What kind of cool shit? Can you show me?”

Yasha made a pointed throat-clearing noise, and produced Jester’s sickle. “Take this back first, before you forget.”

“Oh, yes, thank you.” Jester grinned and plucked it from Yasha’s hand. 

“You know how to use a sickle?” Beau sounded grudgingly impressed. 

“Mm-hm! I’m self-taught, though.”

Someone opened the tent’s main entrance properly, so that it stayed open, and so Jester saw Beau’s thoughtful expression properly in the wash of light that came out of it. 

“I’ll show you some monk stuff,” she said, “if you let me practice fighting someone who’s wielding a sickle. Normally when I spar it’s just people throwing punches back at me.”

“I can do that! I’ve never practiced with another  _ person  _ before.” 

“Then you could do with any kind of practice at all, sounds like.” Beau beckoned her away from the tent, where there was more open space but they could still take advantage of the light. The staff was shrugged off her shoulder and into her hand in a quick, fluid movement that Jester envied. Beau was skinny, but she could move with a purpose when she wanted to, it seemed. “Give me a sec.”

Jester watched with great interest as Beau went through a series of well-practiced poses, stretching her body out and around in ways Jester hadn’t imagined people could do. She flipped her staff one, twice, three times, then settled into a sort of crouching position. 

“Alright,” said Beau. “Go.”

“Go, what?” Jester stared, confused.

“Just try and hit me.”

“Like how?”

“Doesn’t matter!”

Jester aimed a kick at Beau’s leg. Beau swatted her away with a sound hit to her ankle that made Jester recoil. “Hey!”

“You said you wanted to see cool monk shit,” Beau said. “Don’t kick so hard if you don’t want to get hit back hard.”

Jester kicked again, at the other leg, before Beau finished her sentence. Beau reacted just in time to knock her foot away, but she knocked it into her other leg, so Jester counted that as a hit. 

But Beau didn’t stop after knocking her away. She kept her staff moving, jabbing it into the dirt to ground herself as she leaned sideways and threw one leg out to hook her foot around the back of Jester’s knee. 

The whole move jerked to an abrupt halt as Jester stood her ground. Beau fell awkwardly to the ground. Evidently she’d expected Jester’s knee to fold and let her keep moving rather than her own leg to stop. 

“Normally that works,” Beau said, making zero effort to get up. 

“I’m pretty strong,” Jester said. “Maybe you didn’t hit my knee right. Do you want to try again?”

“No, you’re gonna be expecting it now.” 

From several feet away, bidding various folk farewell as they left the tent, Molly clapped. It was slow and sarcastic.

“Fuck off!” Beau yelled, sitting up. She didn’t seem to care that her nice blue-green robe was being ground into the dirt the longer she didn’t get up. 

A pointed cough made Jester look up. A woman in the chain mail and tabard (hers was green) of the city guard had wandered over, and was eyeing her and Beau with an unnerving pointedness. Jester wouldn’t have recognized her as a guardswoman, except her helmet had an image of a dragon’s head in profile, and she knew from listening to Ofelia talk that in Nicodranas, the Dragon Guard were the ones who kept the peace on the streets. 

“Is she causing trouble?” The guard asked Beau. Jester abruptly realized what the situation must have looked like to an outsider. 

“Nah, we’re just messing around,” Beau said. Jester fidgeted and tried to discreetly slip her sickle back into her bag. It didn’t work, though, it was too shiny; the guard caught the movement out of the corner of her eye, and gave Jester a suspicious look. 

“Do you have, like,” Beau said, “a  _ reason  _ to come over here, or anything...? I tripped and fell down some stairs yesterday and I swear to god a city guard flipped me off for making noise, so I know you guys doesn’t actually care if stuff like this happens. And I’m pretty sure there’s not a curfew.”

“Sure,” the guard said skeptically. “Sorry for your trouble, but I do care about doing my job.”

“Where did you even come from? This street is deserted.”

Jester bit back a snarky comment - if Beau thought the main road of Nicodranas was ever deserted, she was obviously from outside the city. The guard, thinking similar thoughts if the height of her eyebrow was anything to go by, pointed back up the road in the general direction of Jester’s house. A carriage sat at the nearest crossroads, with a few other guards milling around it and looking bored.

“I actually have more questions now,” Beau said. 

“Whose carriage is that?” Jester asked, intrigued. She’d never seen such a fancy carriage on the streets before, though she knew it had to belong to someone very, well, fancy. 

“Phina!” One of the guards by the carriage called out, as if seeing attention drawn over to them. “Cut it out and get back over here! We need to get a move on.”

“Cut it out yourself, George,” Phina yelled back. She cast another pointed look at Jester, her eyes glaring out from underneath her helmet and a tuft of dark bangs. Beau caught the look.

“Yeah,” she said, “Who  _ is  _ this guy? I’d like to find out myself.” Picking herself up, she strode off towards the cart. Startled, Phina hurried to overtake her, but Beau’s stride was too long.

Curious, Jester followed them both.

The windows of the carriage were covered by curtains, so Jester could only see the other guards’ startled looks as they approached. Beau, with little regard for herself, went right up to one of them.

“Whose carriage is this?” She asked. Possibly shocked speechless, or more likely indignant, the guard pointed at the coat of arms on the carriage door. Beau looked at it, and then at him. “Is that supposed to mean something to me?”

“Insolent girl!” The carriage’s curtain was whipped aside. Jester bit down on the comment she’d been about to make - she didn’t recognize the heraldry either, but to dismiss it out of hand had to be incredibly rude if the occupant was important enough to have his carriage guarded. And he  _ was _ a he, red-faced with anger and mustache bristling. “Do you know who I am?”

“Is that a rhetorical question?” Beau asked. The man puffed up further. 

“Felmet!” Jester blurted out. Both the man and Beau looked at her in surprise. “I mean - the double trumpets and the quarter full of waves on the shield, that’s the Felmet crest, isn’t it?” She’d looked through books of heraldry before, because her mother wanted her to, but very few had stuck with her. Felmet’s crest didn’t have unicorns or seals in it, but it had waves, and that had been enough to attract the attention of a ten-year-old. By now, Jester had half the book memorized. 

“How do  _ you  _ know what the Felmet family crest looks like?” The man’s incredulity was edged with disgust, as he looked Jester up and down. 

“I saw it in a book,” Jester said honestly, glancing around to see if she could easily get away. Had it been a bad idea to answer? Maybe she should’ve just walked away when Beau went to confront him. 

“Hey,  _ I  _ gotta question,” Beau interrupted. “Why the hell are you sending your guards out to hassle random people? Is that how things work in Nicodranas?”

“Beau,” Jester hissed, but it was drowned out by Felmet’s reply.

“What exactly are you trying to insinuate?” Felmet demanded, reddening again. “How dare you! Who are you?”

“None of your business,” Beau snapped back. 

“It is entirely my business! You presume to ask questions of me, you bring someone practicing devilish arts with you-”

“I’m not-” Jester began.

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Beau demanded. “She hasn’t done anything to you! The fuck is a ‘devilish art’?”

“She knew my heraldry!”

“So?”

Felmet had enough space left in his brain to put aside his anger for one moment and sneer. “What  _ tiefling  _ would know noble heraldry on sight?”

“Maybe you’re just a dick,” Beau said disgustedly. Jester wondered if she could invoke her Blessing without being noticed. 

“Guards!” Felmet shouted, practically purple. One guard moved in between him and Beau; another moved to take Beau’s arm.

Jester jumped when a hand clamped around  _ her  _ arm, too. A bored-looking man in chain mail was eyeing her warily, and looked like he’d rather be doing anything than what he currently was being ordered to do. 

“I didn’t do anything except walk over here!” Jester said, truly alarmed. The guard opened his mouth to answer, but at that moment Beau hit the one holding her in the crotch with her staff, and his attention suddenly shifted. Jester took advantage of the moment to try and twist out of his grip, but only succeeded in making him tighten it. 

“Listen, girl, you’re not going anywhere,” he snapped, twisting her arm behind her back. Jester cried out, and on impulse Rebuked him.

She could feel the blanket of cold that suddenly spread, and heard the guard’s high shout of pain. But as soon as his hands left her she flung her arms out and called down a sphere of Darkness that enveloped the carriage and all of the guards gathered around it. 

Then, amid cursing (most of it recognizable as Beau’s), Jester fled.

 

It took Invoking Duplicity  _ and  _ using her Blessing on herself to get Jester safely back through the streets around her home. By the time she had snuck around the side to the backyard, though, the Blessing had worn off. Jester was already tired, exhausted from the fright that had overcome her as she fled back towards her house, but she steeled herself for the climb back up to her room. 

Or, she was, until she came around the corner and saw someone in the backyard.

Jester and the gardener froze simultaneously, staring at each other. He’d been in the middle of digging up weeds, and held one uprooted victim in his gloved hand. Jester was acutely aware of the stiff way her hair had dried, and the prickly layer of salt on her skin from the ocean. Her underclothes were still damp. She clutched at her bag, he at his trowel. Neither said anything for a long moment.

“Please don’t tell anyone,” Jester whispered as quietly as she dared, while still making herself audible to him. “I’m going back to my room. Please.”

The gardener, with slow movements - he had a long grey beard, so Jester chose to believe it was age rather than wariness that kept him from moving too fast, but he was looking at her like she was a wild animal - got up, opened the back door of the house, and went inside.

Jester bolted to the wall and scrambled up it as quickly as she could. If only she could use her Blessing just once more! But her fingers and toes knew the cracks and grips of the wall well, so even if she tore a little ivy off in a gut-wrenchingly noticeable way, she was more than halfway up before-

“Jester!” Ofelia’s voice sent ice through Jester’s veins. It was a distant hiss - Ofelia wouldn’t risk shouting in the open, no matter how hidden from view the backyard was. “You come down here this instant!”

Jester froze, weighing the pros and cons of disobeying. If she went down - what then? But if she went up, maybe she could claim she’d been in her room all along. It would be Ofelia’s word against hers - oh, she hated to put Ofelia in a bad spot, but it wasn’t worth it.

Jester kept climbing. 

She heard rapid footsteps and the slam of the back door as she hauled herself through the open window. No time for anything fancy. Jester hurled her bag under her bed, careless of putting anything away, and scrambled into the bathroom. She shoved the vanity table in front of the door and nearly tore her clothes off. She had to get the telltale salt residue off her, and then she’d have a case to plead. Hands shaking, Jester managed to fold her outer layers nicely like she always did and set them to the side as the tap she’d turned on gushed water into the bathtub. 

She stuck her head under the water, feeling her hair soften, and the smell of the sea fled from her nose. She only heard the knocking at the door when she surfaced. 

Jester didn’t say anything, instead hurriedly stuffing the sea-soaked clothes into a drawer and jumping into the tub. The heat of the water stung. She muffled a pained hiss and turned on the other tap. 

“Jester, I know you’re in there!”  _ Now  _ Ofelia had raised her voice. It was a rare, and disconcerting, instance. “Let me in!” 

Jester sank lower in the water. Ofelia could probably hear the noise - she had to know what Jester was doing. “What for?”

“You know very well what for! Unlock this door!”

“Right  _ now?” _

There was a moment of silence, and then a rattling like someone trying to break the door down. Jester jumped violently enough to splash some water onto the floor. An unpleasant emotion curdled in her gut. No one had ever come into her room without her permission before. 

Jester dunked her head underwater again, so she didn’t have to listen. She stayed there for as long as she could, practicing holding her breath. She would need to know for when she saw Fjord again. 

When she came back up for air, she couldn’t hear any rattling or talking. Jester tried to move as little as possible, and turned off the water, but she still heard nothing. 

Jester dredged up some energy and committed to actually washing herself, because she ought to while she was in the tub. The soap slipped out of her hands and splashed into the water when she heard a key turning in her lock.

“Jester?” Ofelia called, no longer quite as loud. Jester stared, frightened, at the door to the main room. How long had there been another key? How long had she been one happenstance away from being discovered, if someone had gone ahead and entered while she’d been outside?

“I’m in the bath,” Jester said, pleased to hear that her voice did not shake. “Is it important, Ofelia?”

“Jester Lavorre, you come out here right this minute,” said her mother’s voice, and Jester gasped. “I want a word with you.”

“But-”  _ Now  _ Jester’s voice wavered.

“Now.” Her mother’s voice was iron.

“I-I need to put on my bathrobe.” Slowly, Jester pulled herself out of the steaming water, turning off both taps. The bathroom echoed with silence. She dried herself off, with towels whose softness no longer felt at all pleasant. Every jingle of her jewelry made her wince, the way it echoed. She left wet footprints on the tile floor, and her hair dripped onto the collar of her robe as she put it on. 

Jester took it slow, making sure the overlap of each side was perfect and the sash was tied into a neat bow. She moved the vanity table out of the way, trying (and failing) to do so quietly. 

But she paused with her hand on the doorknob, breath catching in her chest. Jester swallowed, begged the Traveler for strength, and opened it. 

Ofelia was sitting on her small sofa. Her mother was pacing the length of the room. Ofelia looked up when Jester came in; her mother did not. 

“Sit down,” Ofelia said. She looked serious, a dark emotion knitting her brows together. Jester perched on the edge of her bed, feeling her hair drip more aggressively as her movement shook water off. Her mother’s pacing came to a halt, but she still didn’t turn around. 

“Where did you go, Jester?” She asked.

“I was just in the bathroom-”

“Don’t lie to me.” The disappointed look that her mother turned on her was crushing. “This night is already bad enough, don’t lie to me on top of everything else. Why were you outside the house?”

Jester breathed slowly, and looked down at her knees. What was worse? Admitting what she’d done and never being able to leave again, or consciously lying? She wasn’t sure she was capable of the latter. 

None of them spoke for a long time. Her mother sighed when it became apparent that Jester was not going to say anything.

“How long has this been happening?” She asked. “Is that why you lock your door, so nobody will be able to tell you’ve left?” Jester tightened her grip on her knees. No words came to her that would make the situation better. 

“Jester,” Ofelia said softly, “just say something.” The softness of her voice made Jester  _ angry.  _ Ofelia wasn’t on her side at all. Ofelia had gone to get the key and let her mother in. Ofelia had been ready to shout at her. All because Jester wanted to go outside!

Her mother started pacing again. Her long robe swished around her ankles, tugged back and forth by her lashing tail. 

“You can’t just climb out of the window,” Her mother said. “Gods, just imagining that is making my heart race! Do you know what could have happened to you if you’d fallen?”

Jester knew very well. It had nearly happened twice, and only the Traveler had saved her. After that, she’d gone slower. 

“It’s not safe for you in Nicodranas-”

“Why not?” Jester burst out. Her mother stopped dead. 

“Why  _ not?”  _ She repeated. “Do you have any idea what most common people in Nicodranas think of tieflings?”

“How could I?” Jester said. “You never let me learn.”

Ofelia sucked in a breath. Jester and her mother held eye contact for a long, tense moment. 

“Perhaps this is a conversation we should have had long ago,” Her mother said quietly. “But sneaking out was not the solution. Even some of the noble classes are not free from base prejudice, and one popular tiefling lady is not enough to change that in a single lifetime. I dare not think what might have happened to you if you decided to go freely mingling among just anybody and someone with a senseless hate spotted you.”

“If we should’ve talked about it before,  _ you  _ should have said something,” Jester said. Bitterness was welling up in her throat, long years of longing fighting with her love for her mother. 

“I didn’t know you wanted to-”

“I didn’t know you cared enough to let me, if I asked,” Jester bit out. Her mother stepped back, eyes widening a fraction of an inch for just a moment.

“Of course we could have talked about it,” she said, sounding hurt. 

“But you wouldn’t have  _ let  _ me?” Jester caught on to the careful wording.

“We could have talked about it if you’d asked me,” her mother said firmly. “I’m your mother, not your jailer. I just want what’s best for you-”

“What  _ you  _ think is best,” Jester said. Tears were beginning to smear her vision from the force of the emotions swirling around in her chest. “You don’t even  _ ask  _ me. You don’t tell me  _ anything,  _ you don’t tell me that you want me to get married and  _ leave,  _ why shouldn’t I leave on my own? I’m never going to learn anything here! And you’re just going to kick me out to live with somebody I don’t even  _ know!” _

“Jester-” Ofelia had risen to her feet. Jester’s fingernails were on the verge of tearing holes into her robe from the force of her grip. She could feel pain where they pressed into her legs.

“I barely even  _ see  _ you! How am I supposed to - to talk to you?” Jester shouted at her silent mother. She had to gulp in ragged breaths, because she was really crying now, and they staggered unevenly between her words. “Everything - you tell me - you tell me by proxy! You send - other people - up here to take c-care of me! I don’t - even know what - m-my own  _ house _ looks like - except - from the outside!” 

“Enough!” Her mother shouted over her, which was astonishing enough that Jester shut her mouth. “I am not going to argue with you, Jester!” 

Ofelia stood uncertainly between them as Jester’s mother pinched the bridge of her nose.

“It is too late at night for this,” Her mother said quietly. “Some time to cool down is in order. Ofelia, please ensure the door is locked behind me.”

Jester wailed and threw herself on her bed as her mother walked out. She didn’t see if Ofelia hesitated. She barely heard the click of the lock over her own sobs.

She’d never been able to leave through the house  _ before _ , but at least  _ she’d  _ been the only one who ever locked her door. Jester buried her face in her pillow and cried until it was damper from her tears than from her hair, and she felt wrung out like her skirts after a visit to the cove. Even thinking about the cove made her feel even more wretched.  

It was pitch dark in her room. Someone must have switched off the lights to the upper floors, if they could be controlled from outside a room. Or maybe Ofelia had turned them off when she left. Jester couldn’t remember. 

Jester’s earring pressed painfully into her jaw and neck. Her head was tilted at an awkward angle to accommodate her horn. One of her legs had fallen asleep below the knee from being still at an awkward angle for so long. Still, she didn’t move, not caring to dredge up the energy to do anything but replay the awful, awful conversation in her head. 

A gentle hand laid itself on her shoulder.

“My dear girl,” the Traveler said softly. Jester nearly burst into tears again. She didn’t turn around - despite the darkness, she was always half afraid (in her more timid moments) that the Traveler would vanish if she tried to lay eyes on him. He’d been skittish about it before, or else thought it was funny to avoid her gaze when she sought him out. 

“I’ll never see any of it again,” Jester said. Exhaustion had sunk into her as deep as her bones, and that was the only thing stopping more tears from welling up. “Not the bakery, or the docks, or the circus. Not even Fjord.”

“Never?” Behind her, the mattress sank very slightly, as though a nearly weightless someone had sat on the edge of the bed. “Because of a silly locked door? You never used it.”

“But they were never looking for me,” Jester sniffed. “I have to go down three whole stories and the backyard has a fence. They’ll lock the gate and maybe even my window.”

“Your mother might have locked your door, but there was truth in her words when she declared that she was not your jailer. There are lines I do not think she would cross, and bars across your window is such a one.” 

“But how am I going to climb down without being seen? I can’t.”

“And how did you think you were going to see the world when you couldn’t climb out the window?” The Traveler asked. “What about after the first time you fell?”

“That’s not the same,” Jester said. 

“Nothing is ever exactly the same as anything else. Should it be?”

Jester sniffed again, and rubbed a hand across her wet face. Her nose was running, and it was beginning to bother her. “What should I do?”

“Shall I tell you outright?” Jester could hear his grin. She’d learned to hear his expressions, since she couldn’t see them. “There are many things you could do. There are many outcomes to each choice. Not all of them are ones you would want.”

“But you know which ones are which?”

“Not I. Other gods, perhaps, but not I.”

Jester turned her pillow over, wiped her face with the clean cool side of the case, and then tossed it away from her. She heard it land on the floor. “I don’t know either.”

The Traveler was silent behind her.

“I don’t know anything,” Jester whispered. “But I promised Fjord I’d come back. I can’t stay here forever.”

“Perhaps an idea will come to you in the night.” The hand left her shoulder, and ethereal lips pressed a kiss to the back of her head. Jester counted to three, and rolled over.

No Traveler. But she hadn’t expected there to be. But by the wall, on her little table altar, a single candle sported a thin, wavering flame. It was burned nearly all the way down, tiny and struggling. Jester watched it, eyelids slowly sinking down. 

Maybe she’d dream of the sea, and of Fjord. Maybe in her sleep, she’d fly right out the window and over the rooftops to her cove, and he’d find her there. She would never go back home, and never have to worry about any of it again. Everything would work out fine.

In the lingering moment between wakefulness and sleep, Jester saw the candle flame stir in a briny breeze that came through the window. It had been left open just a crack. 

She slept, and dreamed of running out the front door of the house and down the road, with the sea glittering before her feet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know this ended on a sad note, but the Yasha & Beau interaction and Yasha & Molly's scenes earlier on are some of my favorite things I've written. Literally any scene with her in it is such fun.


	5. Confession

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hell yeah, the chapter we've been waiting for

In the morning, it was not salt wafting through the air but the smell of warm breakfast. Someone had come in while Jester was asleep and left her a covered tray of food. Jester had eaten half of it before she remembered that she was angry and locked in. 

Jester paused, sucking bacon grease off her fingers, and regarded the rest of it. Would she be let out if she refused to eat? That seemed like it would punish her more than anyone else, and make it difficult to do anything strenuous like climbing out a window or running away. Not that she knew what circumstances could possibly occur to let her do either, yet. 

Jester ate the rest of the bacon, then went to the window and opened it as wide as she could. It was warm outside, clouds scudding across the sky. Jester peeked her head out just far enough to look down. 

The garden was full of people. Someone had moved a small table and a cluster of chairs outside, and for all intents and purposes her mother was hosting a small party to enjoy the nice weather. Jester saw no less than three people glance up towards her window, in the ten or so seconds she spent watching. 

Jester left the window and went back to breakfast. The backyard was no help to her. Maybe her mother would go inside once her working hours came about, but that was no guarantee that everyone else would leave with her. And Jester had never tried to sneak out through the house before, but she doubted it would be easy, especially after last night.

It did not occur to Jester to question why her thoughts moved to easily to plotting a way out. It seemed natural to her that, in the face of a locked door, escape was the only option. She did not plan her way back into the house, or what she would do if she were caught. Being caught seemed unlikely, anyway - the ideal scenario left her with no witnesses, and if she said nothing aloud no one could catch her at planning. 

Nobody came in to bother her, anyway, and so being caught planning aloud wouldn’t have happened even if she had been talking to herself. In fact Jester only saw one person that day, and that was the servant who brought her lunch up to her.

“What’s going on?” Jester asked, pouncing on the woman and nearly making her drop the tray as she entered. “Where’s my mother?”

“Downstairs, I believe,” the woman said. Jester didn’t recognize her; she was dressed like a first-floor servant, the ones with nicer uniforms because guests saw them. She set Jester’s lunch tray on a table, and the smell wafted under Jester’s nose and made her stomach growl. “As for the first question, you’re going to have to be more specific.”

“Nevermind,” Jester said. She didn’t want to explain what had happened. Even thinking about last night made her stomach twist unpleasantly. The woman nodded, gathered up the breakfast tray, and left.

Jester went to investigate the food, and then stopped. There had been no ‘click’. She waited, counting with barely restrained impatience to one hundred, but she only got to fifty before deciding that was probably enough and darting over to the door.

The knob turned in her grasp, and when she tried the door opened an inch. Jester stared out through the crack at the blank wall beyond, heart racing.

“Did you need something, miss?” A polite voice asked, from just out of her range of sight. Jester’s heart plummeted. She opened the door wide enough to stick her head out through, and saw a second-floor servant sitting in a chair at the end of the hallway near the stairs. 

“No,” Jester said flatly, and threw the door shut with a crash. It didn’t make her feel any better, and the lack of being physically locked in no longer felt like a relief. At least it wasn’t Ofelia who had been assigned to sit and watch in case she tried to leave. 

Lunch was unfortunately delicious. Jester moped around after she finished eating. No ideas on potential ways out came to her. They had neighbors, but even if she could somehow get onto the roof, it was too far away to jump to the neighboring manor’s. Maybe she could get into the trees bordering their backyard, but someone would see her and she wouldn’t be able to get down safely. 

No books could hold her attention, and no songs or drawings seemed interesting enough to sing or draw. It took until well into the afternoon for Jester to even get tired of the rumpled robe she’d slept in and finally change. 

While she was picking up a discarded petticoat off the floor, Jester saw a brown strap hanging out from under the bed. Abruptly, she remembered that she’d thrown her bag under there the night before, and completely forgotten about it. Ignoring the petticoat, she knelt down to retrieve it.

The bag seemed completely out of place compared to the rest of her room. There was sand crusted along the bottom of it, and some of it rubbed off on her hand. The handle of her sickle stuck out of it awkwardly. It was like it had been transported to her straight from the moments after the circus had ended. 

Oh, the circus. Jester teared up a little just thinking about it. She wished she had the energy to paint, so she could immortalize the fantastic sights it had given her. She dug out the flyer Molly had given her and read it over again, tracing the curlicues and odd zigzags of the words. 

Where was Molly now? Would the circus leave soon? And what about Beau, friendly despite her prickliness? Had she gotten away last night, too? Jester ached to find out. If only she could be like her mother, deputizing people with a sweep of her hand to go and do things for her. 

But no - that wasn’t what she wanted. What she wanted was to go out and find them herself. Not that her mother was going to let that happen anytime soon. In a fit of frustration, Jester stuffed the flyer back into the bag. It crumpled with a crackly noise like paper tearing, which only increased Jester’s ire. This was all her mother’s fault!

She only wanted to go outside!

 

The long stretch from lunch to evening seemed like it would never end. When her door creaked open, Jester didn’t bother looking. She’d curled up on the sofa, bored and tired, and was making up arguments in her head where her mother saw all the errors of her ways and took away all the guards, and told Jester she could go outside whenever. But mostly it was Jester making eloquent, emotional points that were impossible for her mother to refute. 

“Jester?” The voice was vaguely familiar; it was the same woman who had brought up lunch. 

“What,” Jester said. 

“It’s dinnertime. Your mother would like you to dine with her.”

_ That  _ was surprising enough that Jester turned her head around to look and see if the woman was messing with her. She didn’t  _ look  _ like she was. 

“What for?” Jester asked. Normally having dinner with her mother was a birthday-only treat, not that her mother always kept her promises. The woman shrugged. 

“I’ve just been asked to bring you downstairs,” she said. 

“...Okay, I guess.” Jester uncurled herself, realizing that she must have been lying down for longer than she’d thought. Her legs were stiff and her eyes tired enough to droop.

“Perhaps I’ll give you a moment to change,” the woman suggested, and tactfully closed the door with herself still in the hallway. Jester remembered that she’d gotten distracted halfway through changing and was still in just a chemise.

Clothes were probably a good idea. But Jester chose her plainest overdress, which she’d already worn the other day, and didn’t brush her hair or try to straighten out her petticoats at all. Looking pitiful might make her mother cave a little easier. 

Jester reached for her earring, to take it out, but her hand faltered on the way there. In the mirror, reflected behind her, her bag had moved the tiniest bit.

Jester turned around and stared at it. It sat perfectly still on the ground. 

Carefully, Jester knelt by it and poked it. No movement. She snatched it up and emptied it out, but all that accomplished was a lot of noise as her sickle and everything else clattered to the carpeted floor. 

“Are you alright?” The servant called through the door.

“Fine,” Jester said grumpily. “I knocked over a chair.” There wasn’t even much in her bag. A sickle, a little pouch of money, the now-torn flyer, a miniature sketchbook, two pencils, a book. The bookmark fell out of the book as it went tumbling from the bag, and Jester grumpily stuck it back in, probably in the wrong spot. 

There wasn’t anything in there except what she usually took with her when she left the house. Jester regarded the array of items, and nearly missed the flash of a smile in the glint of light off the sickle. 

She stared at it for a moment, then carefully wedged it into her pocket. The widest part only  _ just  _ fit through the opening, and Jester had to take a minute or so to tie a scarf around her waist as a sort of belt to hide how the handle poked out. She slipped her coinpurse down the front of her dress, wedged between her stays and her skin, so it wouldn’t jingle. The sketchbook and one pencil went into her pocket as well. The book wouldn’t serve any use during dinner, so she left it behind.

Jester wasn’t sure what she’d need a sickle or money for at dinner, but something compelled her to carry them. The sketchbook was just in case she wanted to draw. 

The woman who had come to fetch her blinked a little at the sight of her when Jester came out into the hallway, but said nothing. The coins did not clink and the sickle in her pocket did not move obviously as Jester followed her downstairs, all the way past the servant watching Jester’s door, past the second floor, and into a first-floor room that Jester had never seen before.

The first floor was a lot less busy than Jester had expected it to be. It was full of elaborate wall paintings, vases strategically positioned on exquisitely carved bureau tables with tiny, useless drawers, and gilt everything. Jester craned her neck to take in as much as she could, and nearly ran into the doorframe of the dining room. 

The dining room was even more of a production. A mural of clouds, with a white dragon snaking down the length of the room between them, decorated the ceiling. The windows had rich red curtains tasseled in gold tied off at either side of them. The table was polished to a shine, and a wine-red cloth ran down the length of it like a skinny carpet for tables. The floor was also wooden and shining, not covered in a soft carpet like the hallway had been or Jester’s room was. 

Her mother’s deep blue outfit matched the edges of the ceiling, where fluffy-clouded day gave way to a sprinkling of starry night. She was sitting to the right of the head of the table, where a place and food was already laid out. Opposite her was another place, and a first-floor servant obligingly waiting to pull the chair out for Jester. 

Jester let him, and sat down. Normally her mother would be working this late in the day, but she didn’t even have a lot of jewelry on, and her clothes were more than just a robe over her underclothes. 

“I apologize for not coming to see you earlier,” her mother said. She straightened her fork and knife. “I had some business to sort out, and I thought doing this over a meal might help.”

“Doing what?” Jester asked suspiciously, as a handful of other first-floor servants who she didn’t recognize entered. Her mother effortlessly ignored the bustle of other people serving them dinner, except to glance at the food and murmur “Thank you, Adina,” to the one who was helping her. Jester’s eyes flickered up to the one attending to her, but she didn’t know any of their names. 

“It seems evident to me that a general conversation is in order,” Jester’s mother said as they trickled out. She took a sip of wine; none had been provided for Jester. But there was bread with little dishes of butter and jam, some elaborately plated fish, and a stew that gave off a much-spiced scent. Jester’s stomach growled. Lunch had been a long time ago. But her mother was still talking, and Jester had a feeling she didn’t want to have a full mouth in case she needed to respond. “I know last night was...stressful. I’ve been thinking over what happened all day.”

Jester said nothing. Her growling stomach prompted her, several seconds into the uncomfortable silence that descended, to have some of the stew. It was delicious, but didn’t provide her with a clever reply. 

“I should apologize for locking you in, first of all,” Jester’s mother sighed when it became apparent that Jester wasn’t speaking. “That wasn’t right. I don’t know if you noticed, but it hasn’t been locked all day.”

“Mm-hm,” Jester grunted. 

They ate in silence for a little while. Jester wasn’t sure if her mother had been apologizing out of genuine regret, or if she’d been expecting Jester to be grateful for backtracking on that particular decision. Somewhere outside the room, a clock chimed the hour. It was nine at night, later than Jester had expected, but it at least explained why it had felt like dinnertime took an age to arrive. 

It took Jester slurping several times from her stew before her mother finally said,

“I know you don’t want to tell me anything about what you’ve been doing, but I hope you understand that I want to know because I’m scared something will happen to you without my knowing.”

Jester paused. All she’d really considered was that, now that she was caught, her mother would stop her from sneaking out ever again. 

“You could let me go outside  _ with  _ someone,” Jester offered. 

“That’s not really the conversation I wanted to have,” her mother said. “We’ll get to that subject. Nonetheless,” she continued as Jester scowled, “I do want to talk.”

“About  _ what,  _ then?”

“About the things you brought up yesterday,” her mother said. “Ofelia told me about some of the conversations you two have had, recently, but I didn’t know you felt so strongly about marriage.”

“You never asked.”

Her mother inclined her head, conceding one point to Jester. “I see now that I should’ve. I’ve spent a lot of time in noble circles, and it can be difficult sometimes to separate public and private spheres of that kind of life. I’ve seen a lot of arranged marriages - I should have remembered that what I haven’t seen is whatever conversations the children involved and their parents are having behind closed doors.”

“Why do you want to talk about marriage?”

“To clear the air about it between us. It involves you, and so you should be involved.”

“You’re not saying all this because you’ve  _ found  _ someone, have you?” Jester asked, with deep suspicion. 

“Goodness, no.” Her mother laughed. “It’s far too soon for that. Your birthday was only a few days ago. Ofelia did tell me about your three-day rule - are you still hard and fast on that?”

“Maybe.” Jester tried to sound as serious as possible.

“Well, cheers to day three, then.” Her mother lifted her wineglass. Jester made no move to drink. After a moment, her mother took a sip, casting her eyes down. “Anyway, if you’d like to know who I’ve thought of, I can share. Aurelian has a son about your age, though someone with a steadier career would be nice for you. Lord Felmet’s daughter-”

“Felmet!” Jester cried, incredulous. The red-faced, mustached man from the night before leaped to mind. Of all the names to come out of her mother’s mouth!

“What’s wrong with Felmet?” Her mother’s forehead creased in gentle confusion. “Have you heard something about the family I haven’t?” She sounded politely incredulous, as if it were absurd that Jester could know anything about Felmet’s family. Jester’s well of patience abruptly ran dry.

“I don’t know,” she snapped. “Does he have a daughter who can convince me she’s worth being married before ‘day three’ runs out?”

“Jester-”

“You think I don’t mean it but I do.”

“Jester, there’s no call to be unreasonable!” Her mother looked surprised. 

“I’m  _ not.  _ Unreasonable is being kept in three rooms your whole life and being  _ treated  _ to being let out-”

“Jester!”

“-and your mother thinking marriage is the problem!” 

Her mother reached out across the table to take her hand, pleadingly, and Jester shoved herself backwards. She bolted away from the chair, uncaring of her dinner, ignoring her mother’s cries for her to stop. She flung herself into the hallway and let her feet carry her down the soft carpet and through the front door, out onto the streets of Nicodranas and down them, as far down them and away from her house and her mother as she could get.

Wind buffeted her as she sprinted, whipping her hair into her face and tangling it with her horns. Jester shoved it out of her eyes without slowing. It was dark out, with only torches to light the main road, but she barely saw them, much less the people she ran past. There was only the road in front of her, at least until she ran out of road and stumbled blindly through the thicket of wilderness that guarded the entrance to her cove.

The wind had stirred the waves up, sending them crashing onto the shore with sprays of foam. The sand was damp all the way up to where Jester was standing. The rocky walls of the cove gleamed with slick moss in what light pushed past the cloudy skies. 

Jester realized that her legs ached, that she was breathing hard enough to be bent over with her hands on her knees, and that she was so upset she was nearly at the point of crying again.

She was out, again, but at what cost? She couldn’t go back  _ now.  _ Her mother would get angry and lock her up again. Jester half collapsed onto a nearby rock, careless of whatever water or lichen it might get on her dress, and buried her face in her hands. What could she do, other than stay in the cove forever?

Maybe she could go talk to Molly, and he’d take her into the circus with him. She could watch the show every night and help Yasha stand guard and carry people’s weapons. Or maybe she could pay someone to take her far away, out of the Menagerie Coast even, and she’d never have to think about Nicodranas again. Not the argument or her mother. Not the bakery that sold bear claws or the circus she might only ever see again in her memories...

When a shadow fell over her, Jester looked up, half expecting to see the Traveler.

“You shouldn’t be out here when there’s a storm coming,” Fjord said. “You might - whoa!” Jester had thrown her arms around him and clung tight, despite the fact that he was soaking wet.

“Oh, Fjord, it’s all gone wrong,” Jester cried. 

“Hey, easy. What’s gone wrong?”

The story stumbled out of Jester in fits and starts, over the crashing of the waves which seemed louder every time she paused for breath. Fjord slowly sank onto the rock next to her, extricating himself from her grip gradually enough that Jester didn’t notice. 

“And she still wants me to get  _ married  _ and that’s not even what any of this is  _ about  _ and I don’t know what to  _ do!”  _ Jester finished, still upset. “I couldn’t think of anywhere to go but here.”

“I’m glad you could get away,” Fjord said. “And not just so I could see you again. Being inside all the time can’t be good for you, even if it’s ‘cause of family. Hey, what did I say?”

Jester had teared up again. “I don’t want to leave forever,” she said sorrowfully, “but I don’t know how I can go back.”

“Is leaving that scary?”

“I’ve never been anywhere else. Except here.” Jester kicked a small rock, blinking furiously until her eyes stopped watering. “And the docks. But even if I go back I can’t stay.”

“Why not?”

“Because she wants me to get married!” Jester cried impatiently. “And if I do that, I’ll have to go to the house of whoever I get married to and probably stay  _ there  _ all the time, and I won’t have any of the same things I like, and I don’t even know if I’ll like  _ them. _ ” 

“Your mother doesn’t seem to have thought this through,” Fjord said. “She kept you inside all the time, but now that it’s time for you to leave you don’t know how to.”

“I guess.” Fjord’s concise guess made an unfortunate amount of sense, and made Jester feel certain things she didn’t care to examine more closely or name. “I bet it’s not like that at all for you. You can probably go wherever you like.”

“Anywhere underwater, yes,” Fjord said. Despite herself, Jester cracked a tiny smile. “With certain limitations. I still need air, so I can’t go too deep. And there are different groups of us that don’t always get along, though usually we do. But we don’t stay in one place like your cities. Leaving isn’t a big deal, because we’re always going somewhere.”

“That sounds nice,” Jester said. “I always wanted to go on a big adventure. Even if it was dangerous. At least it would be something new and exciting.” 

“The sea easily provides both.”

“Yeah.” Jester laughed halfheartedly, and tried to put a joking spin on her words. “That’s why I’m really here, just for the sea. It’s not about you at all.”

“I wouldn’t blame you,” Fjord said seriously, which made Jester smile for real. “But I like to see you come for whatever reason.”

“Thanks.” Jester scuffed the toe of her boot in the sand. The winds had lulled, but the clouds overhead had not gone away, and it was still very dark out. It was a long walk (or run) from her house to the cove - it could be midnight for all she knew. But probably not, because Fjord was still there, and there was a rule for selkies being on land until midnight or something. 

Jester leaned into Fjord’s side, since he was there and she might as well. Even with the thick wet robe of fur, he was still a comfortable headrest - his shoulders were at just the right height. He didn’t even complain about her horn digging into his shoulder, if it was. 

“You’ve always been so good at listening to me complain,” Jester said, remembering all the times she’d chattered away at who she’d believed was a regular seal. 

“I like listening to people,” Fjord said. “It helps me get to know ‘em.”

“And you like knowing me?”

“Yeah, of course.”

Jester sighed, and slumped against him. Why not? She’d already poured her heart out to him. “What do you think I should do?”

“With your mother, you mean?”

“In general.” Jester shrugged, one shoulder bumping into Fjord’s arm. “All my ideas work better in my head. She’s not going to listen to me at all about being able to leave or getting married, and I can’t do anything about that. Unless I find someone to marry before the end of today, I guess.”

“You could always marry me,” Fjord said. 

Jester sat up so quickly she got dizzy. She had to stare at Fjord for a long moment to make absolutely sure she was seeing clearly, and caught the barest waver in his open expression.

“What?” Jester said.

“Well, your mother wants you to marry someone-”

“Are you only saying that because of my mother?”

“I don’t even know your mother,” Fjord said. “I do know you. I meant it.” 

“Really?”

“Really.”

_ “Really  _ really?”

Fjord’s mouth twitched into a smile. “Really really,” he confirmed. “If I can, I want to share everything I’ve got with you. That is, I can, but if you’ll let me. I think there’s a reason we’ve been drawn together for so long, and now we’ve finally truly met, right when you need someone at your side the most.”

“But-” Jester said helplessly, not sure how to put her feelings into words. Her whole chest felt fuzzy and warm, and she was blushing like mad. “I mean - do you really think so?” The idea of fate drawing them together was such a romantic notion, like it had come straight out of one of her books.

Fjord took her hands, which she had been twisting together, and gently intertwined his with them.

_ “Once a fair and handsome Seal Lord,” _ he began, and Jester’s breath caught at his gentle tenor,  _ “Lay his foot upon the sand, for to woo the Fisher’s Daughter, and to claim her marriage hand.” _ He squeezed Jester’s hand gently.  _ “I have come in from the ocean, I have come in from the sea, And I’ll not go to the waves, love, lest ye come along with me.” _

The last note hung in the air. Jester swallowed; the song didn’t end there.

_ “Lord, long have I loved you,”  _ she sang, tremulously at first,  _ “as a Selkie on the foam. I would - _ um -  _ gladly go and wed ye, And be lady of your home.”  _ And then, of course, Jester realized fully what the next half of the second verse said.  _ “But I cannot go into the ocean, I...I cannot go into the sea. I would drown beneath the waves, love, If I went along with thee.” _

Fjord’s face had shuttered when she finished the verse. He went to withdraw his hand, but Jester seized a tight hold of it.

“It’s all ruined,” Jester cried, circling back to being upset as she’d done several times in just the last hour. “Oh, Fjord, I didn’t even think about that. I don’t know how to breathe underwater, and I can barely swim.”

“What?” Fjord said.

“In the song! The Fisher’s Daughter can’t go underwater with him!”

“Wait,” Fjord said, “I’m confused - was that a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’ to the first verse?”

Jester thought,  _ fuck it,  _ and kissed him. 

It was a mess. Fjord jerked back, not expecting it, and there was much knocking together of teeth. Jester backpedaled almost immediately, embarrassed, cheeks flaming even hotter than before (if that was possible). 

“It was a yes,” Jester said, rushing through the words. 

“Oh. Good.” Despite his nonchalant tone, Fjord’s expression had brightened considerably. 

“But I don’t know how it’s going to work at all!”

“Oh, right.” The smile faded somewhat. Fjord began to get a more serious look. Anticipating what he must have been thinking, Jester shoved her hand over his mouth.

“Don’t say  _ you’ll  _ stay with me!” She said hotly. “Don’t you dare, unless the next part is  _ the song actually got that part wrong.  _ We’re not going to do the third verse, too!” She remembered how the third verse ended  _ very  _ well.  _ I will stay and be thy husband, Though it be the death of me.  _

“We don’t die,” Fjord said, slightly muffled. “We just stop being selkies.”

“Well, same difference! And staying on land is a stupid idea. My mother’s on land.” 

“But I wanna stay with you. And if you can’t go underwater-”

“I’m not going to make you give up everything you have just for me,” Jester interrupted.  _ “Lord, I cannot go and wed thee, All to watch my lover die!  _ Think of something else.” She spoke so fast it was more of a chant than a piece of a song.

“I’m not gonna die if I stay on land,” Fjord said, though it was a token protest, and he brooded in a thoughtful silence for a few moments before speaking again. “That was from the fourth verse.”

“What? Oh, yeah, it was.” Jester had nearly forgotten that she’d partly continued the song.

“Isn’t that the verse with the old helpful grandmother, too? She knows where they can find a selkie coat for the girl to use. Maybe we could do that?”

“Yes,” Jester said, hopeful but getting less so the longer she thought about it, “but I don’t think I have a grandmother. My mother never talks about her family, and I don’t know where my father’s family lives, but it’s not Nicodranas. Probably.”

“Well.” Fjord brooded for another few moments.

“Maybe we can find someone who knows something anyway,” Jester offered, when Fjord was not forthcoming with any more thoughts. “There are so many selkie stories here, there has to be a coat somewhere. Nicodranas is a big city-”

“I thought you said you didn’t want me to go on land.”

“This wouldn’t be for good, though. Maybe there’s someone at the University who knows some kind of magic that can help us.”

“How far away is the University?” Fjord looked reluctant. 

“A minute ago you were ready to be away from the sea forever,” Jester accused.

“Yeah, but that was a noble decision,” Fjord said. “This is just - I don’t know, different. If I want to be able to go back into the water, ever, I can’t be on land past sunrise. I don’t have to worry about that if I’m staying for good.”

“The sun only just set,” Jester pointed out, though she was not entirely sure that was true. Tt had been dark when she’d left the house and it took a long time to get from there to the cove, even if she ran. “Sunrise, not midnight?”

“Yeah, sunrise.” Fjord cast a wary glance at the cloudy sky. “Maybe just you should go, just in case.”

“Fjord, no! That would be a terrible way to start our relationship!”

“Is it only just starting now?”

“You’re the one who asked me to marry you,” Jester said. “I say it is. And I say we should go together, because we’ve got to stick together. You can come with me for a little bit, and then I’ll come with you forever.”

‘Forever’ made Fjord regard her intently, his expression softening into fondness after a moment. 

“I guess that is a pretty dinky favor to request of me in return for everything else,” he acknowledged.

“Plus it worked out in the song, didn’t it? So if we were brought together like the two in the song, for a reason, it’s got to work out for us too,” Jester argued. It would have worked like that in any of her novels, so it seemed reasonable enough that the same rules should apply to a real-life selkie as well. 

Fjord considered the idea for a moment, and it seemed to make sense to him as well. “Okay,” he said. “But how far away  _ is  _ the University?”

“Not far at all,” Jester said, though she had never been there, only seen its towers from afar. She knew, at least, that the University flew not the colors of Nicodranas, but the purple and white of its own institution. With unusual flags on top of towers, it couldn’t be hard to miss. 

“Then we’ll go.” Fjord got to his feet, his long robe dragging on the sand behind him in a way that made him look kingly. “Until sunrise, I am yours to command. But please be sensible.”

“Don’t worry,” Jester said, “I’ll listen to you too.” She stood as well and took his hand. “Do you promise you’ll be okay?”

“I won’t like it,” Fjord said with a grimace, “and it may not agree with me. But I’ll live.” 

So long as they got back before sunrise, Jester finished in her head. But it couldn’t possibly be midnight yet, and even if it took an hour to get to the university and back, they wouldn’t be pushing it that much. They were sure to find some aged professor toiling quietly away, and he’d be well-learned in all sorts of ocean tales and know all there was to know about selkies. Then he could tell them where to find a magic seal coat for Jester, like the grandmother in the song, and everything would work out fine. 

But first, they had to get there.

As an afterthought - because she might as well, and if they were going to be married it was permissible - Jester tugged Fjord down and kissed him again. It was much better the second time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> listen, maybe I'm projecting a little with having there be wooing via music, but where else am i gonna make this happen? im single af


	6. Splitting and Joining of Subplots

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been a while, huh? I'm actually not sure if it has been or not. time has no meaning. i would like to be on winter break, now, please

Fjord, in his bare feet, complained about prickers and thorns (while Jester rolled her eyes at him) all the way until they got to the trailing edge of the main road. He meticulously picked every clinging burr off his robe, while Jester shifted from foot to foot and waited for him to finish.

“Do you have a way to dry off?” She asked. “You might be kind of noticeable if you’re all wet.”

“If I’m gonna be away from the sea for a while, I’d prefer to stay wet,” Fjord said, straightening how the robe hung over his shoulders. Jester noticed the little flippers dangling where his human - or half-human - hands also did. “It’s late, anyway. Is the city usually busy at night?”

“In some places,” Jester said, “and we have to go down the main road. I don’t know how busy the University will be.” Did they have classes at night? It had never occurred to her to ponder  _ that  _ before. 

Fjord tucked the robe more securely around his torso, keeping a tight grip on it. “Lead on anyway,” he said. “Let’s not linger longer than we have to.”

Jester led on, a little disappointed that she couldn’t keep holding his hand. 

The road was relatively empty, but once they got close to the docks, it joined into the main road proper and began to fill. Sailors drifting to or from pubs crossed their paths without giving either of them a second look, and the tall masts of ships swayed gently back and forth, anchored at the docks which spread out on the right. On the left, squat pubs and storefronts clustered together. Fjord’s steps slowed as he glanced over them, eyes bright with curiosity.

“It’s just a general store,” Jester said. “They sell rope and stuff, I don’t know. Come on.” She almost tugged at his robe, since his arm was hidden under it, but that seemed somehow rude, so she corrected the movement into tapping his shoulder at the last second. “Don’t we need to be quick?”

“Of course,” Fjord said. He sped up, but he kept glancing around at everything the road led past. 

Jester kept as brisk a pace as possible, looking over the roofs of buildings to try and spot the University’s towers. It took a while to figure out which city lights belonged to something tall, and which was just candles lit inside houses on one of the higher hills. The purple and white flags were invisible against the dark sky, but eventually Jester managed to orient herself. She pointed out the towers with delight to Fjord, once she worked out where unilluminated stone ended and cloudy sky began.

She’d been concentrating so hard to work it out, she didn’t notice the guards come up. 

A pointed cough interrupted Jester’s audible stream of thought - she’d been figuring out which roads to take aloud to Fjord, who didn’t know the roads of Nicodranas any better than she did. Jester turned, and found herself facing two city guardsmen - or rather, man and woman. They were both helmeted and chain-mailed, one in blue underneath and the other in black. 

“Oh, hello!” Jester said, smiling to cover a rising tide of panic. “Can I ask you a question? We were trying to figure out how to get to the University-”

“We’d like to ask you a few things, actually,” the woman in black cut in flatly. 

“Please come with us,” the man said. Jester looked between them, smile fading. 

“We’re in the middle of something, I’m afraid,” Fjord said. He laid a hand on Jester’s shoulder. “Can this wait for another time?”

“No,” the woman said. The man was staring at Fjord, something strange in his expression. Jester didn’t know if it was because Fjord didn’t look human, or because of the selkie robe. 

“We really-”

“Miss, if you don’t come with us I have been authorized to use force,” the woman said, an edge of sharpness in her voice. She appeared to be ignoring Fjord completely. 

Jester mustered a wavery smile and said, “Just give me one second, okay?” She turned around without waiting for an answer, and went up on tiptoes to press a kiss to Fjord’s cheek. Very quickly, as quietly as she could, she hissed, “Run when I say go.”

Fjord glanced at the guards, and then at the street around them. Jester turned back to the woman. “Where are you going?”

“We’ve got transport to our destination over here.” The woman jerked her head. “Follow me.”

“Sure, I - go!” Jester threw out her hands. For the second night in a row, Darkness descended. 

Quick footsteps pounded away from her, from where Fjord had been standing, and Jester made to follow. But a grip like iron fastened around her wrist, and twisted her arm painfully behind her back. Jester cried out, the spell of darkness wavering.

“Dispel it,” The woman’s voice bit out. Jester tried to wriggle away, but that only pulled her arm into a more painful position. The woman shoved her to the ground, and seized her other hand. Jester felt the energy of the spell pull away from her as a pair of cold manacles clicked shut around her wrists. 

“Let go!” Jester shrieked as the woman hauled her up. She reached for Sanctuary, for a Rebuke, for  _ anything,  _ but it didn’t come. No warm magic crackled around her fingertips. 

Jester kicked frantically and wriggled until the male guard grabbed her and threw her over his shoulder, his arms in a vice grip around her legs so she couldn’t kick. Jester elbowed him viciously in the back, but only hit chain mail. 

The man, with surprising strength, tossed her into the back of a wagon. Jester’s head knocked against the wall, and she sat blinking away dizziness as he closed and locked the gate that covered the back of it. 

“Should be getting paid more for this,” Jester heard the woman mutter. Two pairs of footsteps moved around to the front of the wagon, and a moment later it started to move. Jester stared up at the wagon’s ceiling, and realized it was one meant for transporting prisoners. 

Jester wriggled and stretched until she could get the chain connecting the manacles under her butt, and bring her hands around in front of her. Looking closely, she could see tiny runes etched into the metal, and no easy way to unlock them without a key. She turned around, but the barrier between her and where the two guards were sitting was solid wood. So were the walls. Her sickle was useless against anything less giving than fabric or people, and the latter she only knew for sure from reading about. It would take far too long to cut her way out through a wall, and it would only blunt the sickle’s edge. Unless she could get out the back door, somehow, she couldn’t get to them, and she certainly couldn’t get the manacles off if she just ran away.

The bars of the wagon’s back door were sturdy and closely spaced. They allowed light and air in and out, but not much else. Jester tried to investigate the lock, but of course it was on the outside. She could only feel the space where the key went in with the very tips of her fingers. 

Jester turned away from the door, huddled against one wall, and frantically tried to think.

 

Fjord had run on Jester’s cue. Walking wasn’t so hard in human form, and when he wanted to go quickly his legs adapted to running and carried him away. His robe slapped against the backs of his legs, weighed down by the dampness he was still carrying with him.

It took him a couple seconds to realize Jester wasn’t following him. By the time Fjord turned around and got back to the main road, he could see no sign of her or of the two humans who had accosted them. Fjord looked at the ground, but the dirt didn’t yield much in the way of footprints, and anyway he had no clue how to go about tracking someone on land. 

Fjord shook his head in disgust. He should have known it wouldn’t be as easy as Jester thought, but her earnestness was infectious. He looked around, hoping that something might leap out at him and tell him which way she had gone, but there was nothing but unfamiliar land-dweller stuff. 

What to do? The two humans had wanted Jester to go with them. Surely she hadn’t actually gone. Maybe she’d just run a different way, disoriented by the sudden blackness that had surrounded them. 

If she had, she probably would have run deeper into the city, not back the way they’d come. The only way other than where Fjord had gone was further down the main road. Fjord steeled himself, and took a step further away from the ocean. 

 

Walking further, even for a few minutes, revealed no Jester. Surely she would have come to try and find him again, if she’d managed to evade the guards. Maybe she’d circled back another way and they’d missed each other. He turned around to look back the way he came, but no blue figures were on the street. It was lit well enough that he could tell that much. 

Reluctantly, Fjord considered whether or not Jester could have gone with the other two. Not willingly, surely, but there were two of them and one of her. He shouldn’t have been so quick to run. Then again, Jester could have run and taken a turn off the main road, to stay out of sight of the other two. There were lots of little side streets she could have gone down. Far too many for it to be easy to pick a likely one.

“You lost?” Someone called. Fjord realized a teenager was lurking at the edge of one such street, observing him. It must have looked like Fjord was staring at him, Fjord realized with a jolt. 

“No,” Fjord lied. “My apologies, I didn’t mean to bother you.”

“You sure? You were looking around an awful lot for someone who’s not lost.” The kid didn’t look quite human - his face was a little too narrow, and his ears came to a point. 

“I’m sure,” Fjord said. “I’m just deciding which way to go.”

“Yeah?” The kid stopped leaning on the wall and meandered a little closer, like he was trying too hard to be as casual as possible. Fjord wondered if that was a land-dweller attitude, or if he should be put off by it. “Where you trying to go?”

“Not where,” Fjord said. “I’m looking for...a friend of mine.”

“Yeah? Did you get ditched?”

“Not on purpose, I’m sure.”

“Sure,” said the kid, smiling in a very fake sort of way. Fjord narrowed his eyes at him. “You new to the city?”

“Why?”

“You just got a look about you,” the kid said. 

“What kind of look?”

The kid didn’t answer. He leaped out of the way, in fact, as someone else tackled Fjord from behind. Caught by surprise, Fjord was bowled over and slammed into the ground. His chin hit the dirt at a painful angle, and he tasted a sudden flood of iron in his mouth. 

But it didn’t hurt, not in the least, not compared to the prickling, stabbing pain that swept through his body when they pulled the robe off his shoulders. 

“Go, go!” Fjord didn’t even know who was shouting, struck senseless by pain and shock. Despite the clothes on his half-human form he was naked, bereft without the robe, bereft of a part of himself and his only way home-

He had to get home. He had to get the robe back.

Fjord staggered to his feet, hauling himself up by the uneven stones of a nearby wall. The air felt thin and inadequate, with no hint of salt to it, only smoke. His wet clothes clung to his second skin, cold and uncomfortable. It was all wrong, dreadfully wrong. 

Fjord could feel the bond between him and the robe stretching, thinning. He had to chase it, but he had no strength.

But he had to try. The alternative was too much to bear. 

Walking only hammered home how deeply the loss had cut him. Every step was a struggle, and his whole body - especially his shoulders - still smarted with pain where the robe had been torn away. But the worst part was that he could no longer feel the sea, that the one pain that had left him was the precise sense of how he was continually moving farther and farther away from it. There was no crash of waves in his bones, no rush of currents in his blood. He could not smell the slightest hint of brine, despite how wet he still was. 

It was all gone. 

 

When Fjord came to a wide stretch of road, and saw an open field across it with no more buildings close by that he could use to steady himself once he got across, it was almost too much to bear. Fjord leaned heavily against the wall, cursing the circumstances that made such a distance seem insurmountable. The field was large and muddied, but it might as well have been a wall of stone.

If he sat and rested for a moment, he might heal from the loss of his robe. But if he healed, would it ever work for him again? Fjord’s legs trembled underneath him, and he contemplated living with them forever. It was not a pleasant image. But he could not keep walking forever, and he couldn’t tell where the robe had gone. It was a part of him, but not forever linked to him. 

If only he could put it back on-! But that was looking less and less likely every second that ticked past. 

 

Molly had been shuffling his cards, meandering along behind Yasha, when she made a sudden beeline away from the main tent. Startled, he nearly lost a handful of cards, and by the time he managed to rub all the mud off the Chariot Yasha was far away at the edge of the field. Molly, of course, set off after her. It was only when he got closer that he realized she’d been heading towards a person. 

A half-orc man, looking sweaty and ill, was propped up by the grace of Yasha’s hands on his shoulders and attempting to extricate himself. Yasha was in the middle of saying, “...jumped or something?”

“I don’t know what that means,” the half-orc said roughly. His eyes flickered over to Molly as the latter came up behind Yasha, and widened for a flicker of a second. Molly couldn’t identify the motion behind it - surprise, maybe? But Molly was an easy person to be surprised by, so that made sense. “Could you tell your friend to leave me alone?”

“Nobody tells Yasha what to do,” Molly said. “You don’t look well.”

The half-orc did not seem pleased to be told. “I know,” he said, barely audible, casting a stormy gaze at the ground. Molly made eye contact with Yasha, gave her a pointed look he reserved for when she had crossed social boundaries, and jerked his head back towards the main tent. 

Yasha looked reluctant. She shook her head, and allowed the half-orc to slip out from her grasp. Almost immediately his legs shook hard enough to make him stumble, and Molly automatically reached out to steady him.

“You’re  _ really  _ not well,” Molly said, surprised. He wouldn’t have guessed it by the look of the man. Once he laid hands on him, he realized that the half-orc wasn’t sweaty with fever, but soaking wet, as though he’d been tossed into the sea. 

“It’ll pass,” the half-orc said, grimacing.

“Look, I don’t usually do this, but I have a friend who might be able to help. She knows some herbal tricks-”

“No.” The half orc had brightened at the offer of help, but ‘herbal’ had taken him right back to miserable. “No, that won’t help. But...thanks, I suppose.”

Yasha, who had been quiet, abruptly reached out and took the half-orc’s shoulder again to spin him around to face her. She stared, intently, into his surprised face for a long, tense moment.

“Where’s your coat?” Yasha asked. 

 

The half-orc - or selkie, Molly amended, and he was going to have to ask Yasha later about how she’d recognized his nature so quickly - was named Fjord, and he settled only reluctantly into the comfortable mess of Molly and Yasha’s tent. Yasha had insisted on dragging him there, and hung some kind of roughly-carved charm over where he lay that actually seemed to help. 

“But we don’t know where his coat is,” Molly said for probably the fifth time.

“We can find it,” Yasha said. “How big can Nicodranas be?”

“Very!”

“We’ve got to,” Yasha said stubbornly. “Selkies turn into humans permanently - or half-humans, for him, I guess - if they end up stranded.”

“What about all those stories about selkie wives finding their coats years later and ditching the husbands?” Molly asked.

“Do you think they’re ever the same after so many years on land?”

“Where do you  _ learn  _ these things?”

“Places,” Yasha said stubbornly. “And I’m going to look, even if you’re not.”

“I didn’t say I wasn’t going to,” Molly said quickly. “I just think-”

“Molly!” Came a call from outside. It was Desmond’s voice. 

“Just a minute!” Molly yelled back. 

“There are only so many places it could be,” Yasha said. “If it got stolen by kids, they probably still have it. Maybe they thought it would be funny to steal from someone like him.”

“Sure, only so many places, but we don’t know where those places are,” Molly said, exasperated. “We can’t comb the entire criminal underground in one night. Everyone else thinks _we’re_ the criminals, anyway. If we try something stupid we’re going to get kicked out of town.” 

Yasha pursed her lips, a stubborn expression creasing her brow. “I thought you’d want to help.”

“I’d love to help, I’m just trying to be realistic. No offense,” Molly added, looking around her at where Fjord was lying. 

“No, I get it,” Fjord said quietly. Whatever the charm did, it had thoroughly zoned him out, and he was looking up at the tent roof with a distant expression. 

“Molly, come on! I need you for a moment,” Desmond called again.

“I said just a second!” Molly yelled, then lowered his voice to nearly a whisper. “We’re packing up to move on tomorrow, remember? We can hardly drop everything for a pro-bono wild goose chase.”

“Sure we can. They managed to pack up okay before either of us joined.”

“That is  _ so  _ not my point.”

“Molly!” This time it was Gustav.

“Al _ right!”  _ Molly shouted back. “Yasha, try to think of where we could  _ possibly  _ start while I go see what the hell they need me for.”

“Okay,” Yasha said, but Molly was already flipping open the tent flap to duck out. Outside, only Orna was sitting up to tend to the fire, Gustav lurking nearby. Everyone else had gone to sleep already, too tired from their last performance to even begin taking down the main tent yet. 

“Desmond’s in there,” Gustav said when Molly approached, jerking his head towards the wagon trailer which he and Desmond shared. Molly knew it was cramped inside and lacked privacy, like all the tents did, but a sturdy place with a roof and more than just a bedroll to sleep on was something he’d envied the two owners for more than once. 

“Sure,” Molly said, pulling open the door and jumping up inside. Desmond, who was at the fold-down table, looked up as he entered.

“There you are,” he said. Molly gave him a short, sarcastic wave. “I had an idea I wanted to talk to you about.” 

“Like what?”

“I’ve been thinking of adding something to the show. Not to the show, really, but so we could have something going while we’re not actively performing. A curio cabinet of sorts, except we can’t afford to lug around a cabinet.”

“What, like putting things up in the main tent before a show?” Molly asked, curiosity piqued. 

“Sure, or all day even. Have someone hang out at the entrance and another inside, to keep an eye on people and take entry fees. You and Yasha could do that easily.” 

“Well it  _ sounds _ like an interesting idea,” Molly acknowledged, “but we don’t have anything to put in it.”

“I’ve made a start,” Desmond said, gesturing behind him. Molly craned his neck to look at the thing hanging like a shield between Desmond and the beds. He’d assumed it was a privacy curtain. “I was going to ask you to keep an eye out for things we might snatch up cheap. I know you’re good at spotting interesting things-”

And in those seconds where Desmond kept talking, Molly realized precisely what Desmond had hung up to dry. 

 

Yasha had not noticed the yelling, but she heard the crash that was easily recognizable as someone throwing open the door of the wagon trailer too hard, and after that the arguing voices became much louder.

“I’m not going to participate in this if it’s starting with  _ that!”  _ That was Molly’s voice. Yasha peeked out of the tent to see him gesturing dramatically, one finger stabbing out in accusation. Desmond was standing in the doorway of his and Gustav’s wagon with a thunderous expression. Gustav and Orna, around the fire, had leaped to their feet. 

“You’ve never given a shit before about whether we used stolen items,” Desmond snapped. “I bought this fair and square-”

“This is different and you know it, damn you!”

“What’s this about?” Gustav cut in, placing himself physically between the two of them. “I thought you were just talking about Desmond’s idea-”

“Don’t tell me you knew about this!” Molly exclaimed. 

“About the idea?” Gustav sounded confused. Yasha couldn’t see his face properly; he was facing the other way.

“About the coat!”

Yasha’s attention sharpened threefold. It could be a coincidence - but what were the odds? Molly wouldn’t be getting so upset about a coat unless someone had torn his own to pieces and thrown them in the fire. 

“You don’t think it’s real, do you?” Gustav laughed. “Someone probably just had an old sealskin lying around and threw some water on it to make it look realistic.”

“For someone who likes to believe in fairy tales and superstitions, you’re choosing a hell of a time to stop,” Molly snapped. “We’re in  _ Nicodranas,  _ on the  _ Menagerie Coast,  _ the least likely place in all of Exandria for it to be fake!”

“So people will come in droves to see it-” Desmond began. 

“Or they’ll run us out of town! For all you know, it might be a crime!”

“We won’t even be here tomorrow, much less putting it on display,” Desmond said. “Besides, what’s the alternative? Assuming it  _ is  _ real, the owner is probably long dead.”

“You don’t know that.”

“And why the hell do you care?”

“Because I’ve got fucking morals!” Molly snapped. Gustav made a warning noise, and held an arm out in front of him.

“Molly, this is going too far,” he said. “Wherever the skin came from, we paid in gold for it. We can’t exactly sell it back-”

“You, too?” Molly demanded. He was staring at Gustav, eyes wide. 

“Molly...”

“I thought we had a code! That, between all of us, we could at least scrape together some fucking decency!  _ You  _ told me we don’t fuck people over, Gustav, well this is fucking someone over.”

“If we don’t come up with something new to draw people in the show’s not going to last,” Gustav bit out. “Our audience has been getting smaller and smaller. You and Yasha do your best, and we all perform like our lives depend on it, but it’s not enough anymore.”

“And that means we throw away our principles-”

“Oh, for the gods’ sake, why don’t you complain when you’re in charge of everything?” Desmond demanded. Yasha slipped out of the tent to come up behind Molly. “Would you prefer if we disbanded to save ourselves a bit of gold? Too expensive, so let’s go our separate ways and be proud and penniless?”

“You’re putting words in my mouth-”

“Molly’s right,” Yasha said, doing her best to loom. Judging from the way Gustav took a step away, she’d done a good job. Yasha leveled her gaze at Desmond. 

“We’re not getting rid of it, and that’s my final word,” Desmond said. He was gripping the doorframe with a white-knuckled hand. “If you two hate it so badly, don’t participate.”

“Desmond!” Gustav barked, shocked, while Molly recoiled. Yasha curled one hand into a fist and let the rest of her be stone. 

“You can’t get rid of us,” Yasha said. “We get your audience. I keep all the dangerous ones out.”

“Kylre can do that as well as you. I’m not going to have this stupid argument over a fake selkie coat all the way to Yrrosa.” Desmond shut the trailer door with a thud that was worryingly final. 

“He’s just angry,” Gustav said immediately, turning to face Yasha again. “I’ll talk to him. You just make sure Molly doesn’t do anything foolish.”

Yasha looked down, and discovered that Molly was no longer at her side. 

“No,” she said, with utter certainty. “He meant it.”

“In anger,” Gustav said firmly. “He’s going to regret saying it later, and I don’t want you to leave before that happens.” He wilted a little under Yasha’s stony gaze. “Don’t  _ you  _ do anything rash, either.”

Yasha held his gaze long enough that her silence could become pointed, then turned and went back inside her tent.

She was greeted by Molly throwing a bag at her face. It bounced off and hit the ground. Yasha frowned at him.

“Come on,” Molly said. He was wearing his scimitars and a bag of his own. “We’re going to get that coat back if it kills us.”

“By arguing more?” Yasha asked. 

“No,” Molly said. He turned away from her to pry Fjord up from where the selkie had half fallen asleep. “By finding some thieves.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh boy, a lot more happened in this chapter than i remembered


	7. Reconciliation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All I'll say of this chapter is I listened to 'Omar Sharif' from the Band's Visit for much of it, especially the parts involving Jester, so doing the same may enhance your own experience. Just putting it out there.

It was a shorter ride than Jester had expected until the wagon reached its destination - short enough that she couldn’t think of any good ideas for escape. She shook off the attempts of the guards to haul her out of the wagon, and jumped down on her own once they opened the door. She was glad to get out from behind the bars.

They were on a tall hill overlooking the town, in front of a sprawling manor house. The woman took a firm grip of her arm and steered her inside before she could see much of anything. The house was big, old, and made of looming stone sculpted into pale imitations of waves and shells. 

Inside the house was dark and gloomy. A little light gleamed in reflections on the polished stone floor from under closed doors, but the moonlight was locked out by the quiet, pale servant who closed the doors. The woman’s grip on Jester’s arm did not loosen, even though there was nowhere to go but up a wide, sweeping set of stairs that didn’t seem to lead anywhere but a pointless balcony. The ceiling was so high Jester figured the other floors had to be built around it, and that the house was probably much smaller than it looked from the outside. 

“Find us Lady Felmet,” the man ordered the servant. 

“She’s occupied presently,” the servant replied, quickly enough that it sounded rehearsed. “You can leave this one in the sitting room. I’ve been told to tell you that restraints aren’t necessary.”

“But-” The woman sounded put out.

“You’re free to speak with Lady Felmet about it once she’s free. She’s asked to hear your account.”

The man and woman exchanged a look. Muttering darkly, the woman let go of Jester to produce a key.

“One wrong move, and I’ll put these back on, no matter what Lady Felmet thinks is best, you understand?” She said, scowling. 

“Yes!” Jester held out her hands. The woman unlocked the manacles, and Jester felt a tingle of energy return to her as they fell away. For old time’s sake, the woman manhandled Jester into one of the rooms off to the side, and locked the door behind her.

Jester, rubbing her wrists, looked around. Presumably it was the sitting room, though none of the furniture looked very comfortable to sit on. For all she could tell, it had been carved out of stone like everything else. A couple of long tapestries on the walls did very little to cushion the stark space.

The sofas and chairs were made with colorful upholstery, at least. Lit lanterns mounted on the walls provided comfortable illumination, though there was no fire in the huge stone hearth. It was too hot out for fires, even at night. Jester drifted over to examine herself in the mirror above the mantel. 

She looked tired, which wasn’t a surprise considering all that had happened and how late it was. Her hair hung in hanks where it had gotten wet and dried strangely. Her earring chain had gotten a bit tangled, so Jester spent a few moments fussing with it to straighten out the links as best she could. 

The house around her was quiet, except for once or twice when the footsteps of someone trying too hard to be quiet scurried past outside. Jester paused in the act of finger-combing through the tangled parts of her hair when louder footsteps approached, someone’s heels clicking on the stone floor.

The last person she expected to walk through the door was her  _ mother. _

Jester froze, her stomach dropping to her knees. She quickly averted her gaze from her mother’s reflection, focusing with a desperate intensity on the fire screen.

The door closed with a gentle, echoing thump. 

“I didn’t expect you to show up here,” her mother said. “But Lady Felmet tells me her son ordered the guard to keep an eye out for you. At least now I know why you didn’t want to tell me what happened last night.” 

Jester lowered her arms to wrap them around her torso. Her mother’s footsteps clicked across the floor and stopped somewhere behind her. Not very close. Probably she’d sat down. 

“Would you look at me?” Her mother asked. “I don’t want to argue again, I promise. Please, Jester. It breaks my heart when you look like you’re afraid of me.”

“I’m not afraid of you,” Jester said, and it was true. She wasn’t sure what she was afraid of. Anger, perhaps, or the specter of going back to her room and living the life her mother had so neatly planned out for her. 

Her mother sighed, like she thought Jester was lying. “Lady Felmet says that the guards tell her you used magic on them,” she said. “Where did you learn that?”

“The Traveler taught me.”

“The Traveler?” Her mother sounded surprised. “I thought - nevermind.”

“You thought what?” Jester almost turned around. Her mother had never said much about the Traveler.

“Nothing. I’d just never heard of him before.”

“He’s not  _ imaginary,”  _ Jester said sourly, finally turning around. Her mother was sitting on one of the sofas, wearing clothes Jester had never seen on her before and almost as much jewelry as Molly. “He taught me a lot of things. And  _ he  _ never tried to force me to do anything or tell me what to do with my life.”

Her mother said nothing for a long, long moment, but her gaze never wavered from meeting Jester’s. 

“I only ever wanted what was best for you,” she said softly. 

“You gave me what  _ you  _ thought was best,” Jester said. “You never asked me what I wanted, or what I thought, how could it have been what was best? Your plan for what was best ended with me going out into a world you never let me see!”

“But you saw it anyway, it seems,” her mother said. There was the faintest tremor in her voice, and Jester stopped. Her mother was always so certain of herself - why a tremor? To Jester’s horror, there was a glistening wetness in the corners of her mother’s eyes.

“Mom,” she said, too shocked to get anything else out. 

“I always thought I could lock everything terrible outside,” Marian said, lowering her head. She was  _ never  _ the first to break eye contact. Jester crept closer, unsure whether to comfort or keep her distance. “If I could do that much-” She broke off, and made no attempt to finish.

“But,” Jester said, torn, “outside isn’t  _ all  _ bad. Outside is where the sea is.”

Marian chuckled wetly. “The sea can still drown you.”

“Not if I learn how to swim.” Tentatively, Jester sat on the sofa. Marian leaned over and swept her into a tight hug, breathing too evenly to not be keeping count for each breath. Jester allowed it, inhaling the scent of her mother’s lavender perfume as a hand stroked the back of her head. 

“You don’t know how bad it used to be, in Nicodranas,” Marian said into her hair. “Before you were born, I hoped - sometimes - that you wouldn’t be like me. It skips a generation, sometimes. That’s what happened with me. Nobody even remembered who in the family had made tieflings possible, but there I was.

“But then I had you, and you were blue all over, and I didn’t even think of anything except how much I loved you.” Marian pulled back to cup Jester’s face, and Jester saw with alarm that there were thin wet tracks down her cheeks. “You might have been the best thing that ever happened to me. You were  _ never  _ a curse,  _ never  _ a burden. I just wanted to keep you safe from people who thought you were.” 

“I didn’t think you thought any of that,” Jester said, still alarmed but trying to sound reassuring. “I just wanted to go outside.”

Marian smiled; it was a small smile, but there. “Maybe I went too far,” she said. “I’ve been thinking about it a lot, ever since you came back yesterday.”

“It wasn’t all bad,” Jester said. “I just wanted to leave without having to sneak outside, and I could never tell you about any of it because I wanted to be able to keep leaving. It’s not at all terrible outside.”

“I know.” Marian tucked her hair behind her ear. “But some things are not easily forgotten.” Her smile wavered. “And some memories are still clear to me, even now. But I shouldn’t have let that affect how I raised you so much.” 

Jester hesitated, for a fraction of a second. “No,” she said, “you shouldn’t have.”

Marian let go of her face, and they sat, looking at each other. 

“Please come home, Jester,” Marian said. “I don’t know if we can put this whole mess with the guards behind us, but Lady Felmet’s more reasonable than her son. We’ll pull through just fine.”

Jester opened her mouth to answer, and hesitated.

“I can’t,” she said. Crushing disappointment weighed down her mother’s face, and in an instant the whole story was spilling out of Jester - the seal at the docks who turned out to be Fjord, his saving her when she fell, the promise, the circus and Beau, the proposal, and then losing track of him as she was hauled away to Felmet’s house. 

Marian’s face went through a complicated series of emotions as she talked, but she made no attempt to interrupt. When Jester finally finished, and began to scramble for words to fill the silence with, only then did she speak.

“Oh, Jester,” Marian said, very quietly. “Are you sure this is what you want?”

Jester - who had been raised on tales of adventure, of intrigue, of magic and mystery, of love - said, “More than I’ve ever been sure of anything.” 

Marian seemed to struggle for a moment, jaw twitching several times as if she wished to speak. But she only leaned forward, and enveloped Jester in another hug. 

“Don’t leave me forever,” she said. “Promise me that, Jester.”

“Of course,” Jester said, blinking back tears of her own. 

“Midsummer, every year,” Marian said. “Can you give me that?”

“Yes.” Jester would keep track of the days if it killed her, she swore to herself, if only to remember when Midsummer was.

“Then I give you my blessing.” Marian straightened, and kissed Jester on the forehead. “But I’ll miss you, dear heart.”

“I’ll miss you too, mama.” Jester hadn’t called her mother ‘mama’ since she was very little. She didn’t know where it came from. She blinked faster. “I wish I could stay  _ and  _ go.” It didn’t make any sense, but her mother smiled sympathetically.

“I wish that, too.” 

“You should keep this,” Jester said, pulling her sketchbook out of her pocket and pressing it into Marian’s hands. “I can’t get it wet.”

Marian handled it as though it were made of gold. “If you must go, you should go before those guards finish with Lady Felmet,” she said. “I’ll give you as much time as I can. And I believe these windows open.” 

Jester nodded. As reluctant as she’d initially been to sit down, it was even harder to stand up and walk away. 

The windows did open, and the heavy curtains shifted with a rustle of golden tassels as a breeze blew in. It was warm, and heavy with the smell of the sea. 

Jester hopped over the sill and pointed her feet back towards town.

 

Fjord, once he’d recovered from the influence of whatever the hell kind of charm Yasha had literally put him under, carried himself with great dignity and a subtle resentment, sticking close to Molly. Evidently the few minutes of rest he’d gotten had been enough to put him more at ease on two feet, and to make him significantly wary of Yasha. She didn’t seem to mind, and Molly couldn’t bother to care. He was trying to make sure he remembered where he was going.

He had, as he’d explained to Yasha and Fjord as they made their quiet escape out the back of the tent, asked around town earlier in the day, searching for two would-be thieves they had kicked out the night before. He didn’t care to track them down - they hadn’t actually stolen anything - but if they  _ did  _ manage to, it would be good to know where they were staying and potentially be able to recover whatever they’d taken. 

His search had sent him into the seedier warrens of Nicodranas’ streets, and he now led Yasha and Fjord down the same ones and into a dilapidated tavern. The bartender, who he had paid off in his initial search, looked up and then immediately looked away. Plausible deniability - if he didn’t see them go upstairs, he could claim ignorance of whatever he thought was about to happen. Molly appreciated that. 

It was difficult to find the right room, though the bartender had given him the number, as most of them were worn and splintery and lacking numbers altogether. Molly found faint traces of a fourteen on one, and counted off until he found what must have been number seven.

“Here we are,” he called to Yasha, who was waiting by the stairs, and knocked. She stirred herself (she’d been watching his door search with half-lidded eyes - she’d been awake all day, like him, and it was getting late). From inside, there was a silence that spoke of people trying to move very quietly.

“Who is it?” Called a voice from inside. 

“No one you’ve met properly,” Molly replied. “I promise I come in friendship. Any weapons I have are sheathed. May I come in?”

There was a long silence. Fjord looked askance at Molly, who winked back at him.

“...The door is open.”

Molly twisted the knob and let himself in.

A lone candle did very little in the way of illuminating the room, and the moonlight that might have come through the window was cut off by the clouds that had been lurking all evening, and the house next door pressed up right against the tavern. Still, Molly could see the room’s lone occupant rise to his feet, looking skittish. A book was open on the bed next to him, as if he’d been reading. Or writing, Molly amended, seeing a quill and ink pot balanced carefully on a teetering bedside table. 

“Evening,” Molly said, breaking out what he considered to be his most charming smile. The man’s eyes widened as he recognized Molly. “Yes, we’ve met, there’s a reason I put ‘properly’ in that introduction. I’m not here to call the guards. In fact I believe we’ve gotten off on the wrong foot.” He stuck out his hand. “Mollymauk Tealeaf, at your service.”

The other man took his hand warily, but his grip was firm. “...Caleb. Caleb Widogast.”

“Caleb. Lovely name. I’d like to hire you to steal something for me.”

Caleb’s brow creased. He looked uncertain. “Where’s your friend?” He asked. 

“Right here. He goes by Fjord.” Molly nodded sideways towards Fjord. 

“The other one. The big one.”

“In the hallway, I believe,” Molly said. “She could come in, probably, but it’d get cramped fast.”

“No, the hallway is fine.” Caleb scrutinized him, tugging absentmindedly at the edge one frayed sleeve. His dirty coat was thrown across the bed, as if he’d discarded it for the night. A cat was curled up on top of it, one eye open to regard Molly lazily. “Why would you want me to steal something?”

“I’ve had a moral falling out with some friends and I’m in a terrible mood,” Molly said. “I only need you to steal one thing, and it won’t be difficult. The rest of us can run interference as a distraction while you do whatever it is you do. I warn you, though, if you try and pocket anything else, if it’s shiny and pretty it’s glass and lead underneath the paint.”

“I will keep that in mind,” Caleb said. “You talk like I’ve already agreed.”

“Do you have anything better to be doing? Any other money-making schemes?” Molly asked blithely. Caleb’s gaze sharpened.

“How much will you pay?” 

Rolling his eyes, Molly fished out his purse. “Yasha!” He called, without bothering to turn around. Yasha leaned into sight, observing the room with one quick glance. “How much disposable coin do you have on you right now?”

“Are we paying them?” Yasha asked.

“We’re discussing a potential number. Anything from you?” 

“When she puts down the crossbow,” Yasha said. Molly jerked and looked around sharply, seeing nothing but the way Caleb stiffened. 

“Don’t,” Caleb said sharply when Molly reached for the hilt of a scimitar. “We don’t have to fight. Nott, put it down.”

“I don’t trust him,” came a higher-pitched voice from a particularly dark corner. Even when he looked, Molly could make out very little. It took hearing ‘Nott’s’ voice for him to spot the crossbow in the first place, which was leveled at him. He did not take his hand off the scimitar’s hilt. 

“Neither do I,” Caleb said. “If he tries to skip out on payment, you can shoot him then.” Molly raised his eyebrows, grinning despite himself. He was beginning to like Caleb. 

“Fine,” Nott said, and the crossbow slipped out of sight as it was lowered. Molly removed his hand from the hilt of the scimitar. “He better have gold.”

“Silver, I’m afraid,” Molly said. He almost added,  _ but plenty of it.  _ He managed to bite it back - lying would not be a fortuitous start.

“Yasha?” He asked instead, turning back to look at her. She ducked out of sight, then came in to hand him her purse. 

Glancing between the two of them (he didn’t ask Fjord - he doubted selkies dealt in metal), Molly did some quick mental math. Neither of them had much, but he had his fortune-telling proceeds, and he knew Yasha did some side work when she felt like it or had the time. It was still an unconvincing number.

“You know,” he said, “I do fortunes and the like. If you’ve ever wanted to know what your future holds, I could be persuaded to do a couple for free.”

“I’d prefer coin, and not favors,” Caleb said flatly.

“Alright.” Damn. “For a small, easy job - one gold, fifteen silver.” He’d wanted to keep Jester’s gold piece for himself, but gold was always more persuasive than its lesser cousins. 

“Two gold,” Caleb said.

“If you count ten out of the fifteen silver, there is.”

Caleb exchanged a glance with the shadowy corner. “I doubt you’ve named the limits of your purse,” he said. 

“Some of us need a little left over, friend.”

“The gold, and twenty-five silver, then.”

Molly looked at Yasha. Yasha looked at Fjord, briefly - Fjord was leaning against the wall and still looked slightly ill. She nodded, a tiny dip of her head.

“Twenty silver,” Molly said. 

Caleb looked at him for a long moment, and then asked, “What costs one gold and twenty silver to steal?”

“A sealskin,” Molly said, “and that’s all you’re getting from me, unless you plan to actually do it.” 

Caleb cocked his head. His eyes wandered for a moment up towards the ceiling, as though he were listening to something Molly couldn’t hear.

“I will also need three of the beads from your friend’s hair,” he said.

“What?” Molly said.

“I want ‘em,” Nott said, still hiding in her shadowy corner. Speechless, Molly looked to Yasha.

“You can have two,” Yasha said. 

“Done,” Nott said immediately. 

“Then it is a deal,” Caleb said. He held out his hand. 

“You can have half upfront.” Molly shook out the silver coins into his hand, taking most of the silver from Yasha’s purse since he was providing the gold, and handed over fifteen. “Did you have a plan besides that you would distract while Nott and I stole?”

“I’ll go with you to retrieve the robe,” Fjord said, which was the most Molly had heard out of him in one go. 

“Is it a robe or a skin?” Caleb asked, frowning. Molly waved the question aside. 

“Does it matter? It’s one item and not likely to be well guarded. I know who has it - it’s in the big trailer behind the circus tent, the only thing that isn’t a tent. The windows are big enough to get into if you can get them open, and they don’t lock. Yasha and I can draw out anybody who might be inside.”

“How?” Caleb asked shrewdly.

“I was thinking talking, but if we really need to cause a ruckus to stall for time the situation might degenerate.” Molly grimaced. “The faster you can work, the better I’ll think of you for it.” He didn’t relish the idea of drawing his swords on his carnival fellows. 

“The beads, I think, before we talk further,” Caleb said. Yasha took two of the hanks of her hair within easy reach, and tugged off the beads that decorated them. Molly was sorry to see them go - Yasha’s only other decorative piece was a religious icon on her belt. He was of the opinion, and had been for months, that she could use a little bit of sparkle.

Yasha held out her hand with the beads, and Nott finally detached herself from the corner. Molly had guessed she was small, but he did not expect a ragged figure with claws and bulging yellow eyes to dart out and snatch the beads away. Nott scrambled onto the bed behind Caleb to huddle and examine her payment, stilling long enough in range of the candle for Molly to process the white blur he’d seen as a strange, creepy mask that currently hung around her neck. Above it, her face was clearly that of a goblin.

“If you wish to take issue,” Caleb said evenly, “you are free to go.” He’d seen Molly looking. Molly glanced between the two of them. The cat yawned, exposing pointy teeth.

“Far be it for me to judge,” he said, thinking of Toya and Kylre. “I’ve seen stranger partnerships.” 

Caleb relaxed, his shoulders un-hunching slightly. “Then tell me more about this thing we’re looking for, and how complicated a theft may be.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> nott is the best, you guys


	8. Getting the Team Together

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh man, I'm excited for this chapter. I love bringing things together.

It was lucky, Molly reflected as he and Yasha made a shortcut through the main tent, that the field they’d set up on wasn’t surrounded by emptiness on all sides. A couple of houses and a tiny copse of trees bordered the back end, only about thirty feet away from Desmond and Gustav’s trailer. The houses were occupied, but Caleb had assured Molly that thirty feet was a distance that could be covered quickly, and any kind of development to mask their movements was enough. Besides, the city quickly got denser after that. 

They’d agreed to meet back at the crossroads near the dingy inn once all was said and done. Molly wouldn’t have ordinarily trusted such a promise from Caleb and Nott, but Fjord was with them, and once he got his hands on his coat it was unlikely that he’d allow it to be re-stolen. 

Molly emerged into the circle of sleeper tents. The fire had died down, and Orna was nowhere in sight. Probably she’d gone to sleep along with everyone else. He frowned at the seemingly unguarded camp, but then he realized that the lights were on inside the trailer. 

Molly paused at the edge of the circle of tents. Yasha, without bothering with a final glance, strode up and knocked on the door. 

Molly played his agreed-upon role and turned away, kicking at the dirt. He saw light spill out as the door opened, and heard Gustav say,

“Oh, you’re back! I was wondering if you’d spend the night elsewhere.”

“We should talk,” Yasha said bluntly. 

“Oh.” The second ‘oh’ was significantly less enthusiastic. The shadow of Gustav leaned around Yasha’s, as if he were looking for Molly. Molly kicked harder at the dirt, and dislodged a rock that went skidding off into the darkness. “Desmond and I have been talking for a while, you know. Maybe some sleep is in order first-”

“No,” Yasha said. 

“Yasha, come on. Nobody’s at their best right now. It’s practically midnight.”

“I want to talk about this now,” Yasha said, “not when we’re on the road away from Nicodranas.”

Molly heard a sigh, and some irritable muttering. The light was briefly blocked, and footsteps stomped their way over to him. 

“Well?” Desmond sounded grumpy. The light in the trailer flickered out; Yasha must have turned it out, their signal to the other three.

“If we’re doing so badly, why didn’t you say anything?” Molly asked, turning around sharply. “I know audiences have been small lately, but if running this circus means you keep bad news from the rest of us that put our backs into it, something other than our acts have got to change.”

“I figured you were smart enough to guess,” Desmond snapped. “I didn’t say anything because who the hell wants to hear that their livelihood is going down the drain?  _ Orna  _ knew well enough, and I’m sure the twins guessed.”

“Oh, so because  _ Orna  _ knows-”

“Molly,” Gustav said warningly. 

“We should walk,” Yasha said. “If we’re moving nobody’s going to have the energy to argue.”

“Good idea.” Gustav jumped on the suggestion with evident relief. Desmond rolled his eyes, but followed as Gustav led the way around to the front of the tent. Molly did as well, resisting the urge to look back towards the trailer in case someone else followed his gaze.

Even if Molly had looked, however, it wouldn’t have mattered if someone else had as well. There was nothing to see for anybody who wasn’t very, very skilled at looking.

 

As soon as the light had gone off, Nott had sneaked closer to examine the windows. One was already open a crack, which Molly had predicted - it got stuffy inside easily, especially with lit candles. Caleb, who had followed her, gave her a boost so she could ease it open and wriggle inside. 

Fjord had given them a description of the sealskin practically down to the individual hair. Nott didn’t know what was going on with him and it, but she got paid in beads and gold for this (Caleb had agreed that the actual gold piece could be her share) so she didn’t care enough to ask for an explanation. That could wait until after the stealing part. 

Nott sniffed the air, but it was full of candle smoke and perfume. Any trace of salt (supposedly the skin had been wet with seawater) was lost. The trailer was simply furnished, with not much lying out for her to look at. 

“Caleb,” she whispered, “are there any alarms in here?”

From outside, she could hear Caleb mutter under his breath, and there was a faint flash like he was hunching up to hide the distinctive light of a cast spell.

“No,” he said after a moment. “Nothing magical that I can see, except for a faint trace from something that doesn’t seem like an alarm.”

Nott frowned. If Caleb said it wasn’t an alarm she trusted him, but she hadn’t expected  _ any  _ kind of magic except maybe alarms. If it wasn’t an alarm, what was it? 

“Be careful,” Caleb said. “I won’t be able to hear you - I’m keeping an eye out with Frumpkin.”

“I always am.” 

Tentatively, she moved through the trailer. There was no curtain-like thing hanging anywhere. Molly had said the skin had been hanging up, but it must have been taken down. Nott checked the floor, and then looked around at the various cabinets mounted on the walls. 

One drawer held a heavy leather purse, which Nott investigated and debated over, but ultimately left alone. They’d been paid already, at least partly, and there was gold in her future. The next drawer was much more promising - it was full of clothes, and there was a little satchel of sewing supplies in the corner. Nott figured three tiny, flame-orange buttons wouldn’t be missed. And maybe she pinched some miniscule golden beads out of a tiny sachet, but who could be bothered to count beads that small?

 

“What I don’t understand,” Gustav said, “is why you’re so convinced the skin is a real coat.”

“We’re in the city where selkie stories basically originate, and you’re convinced it’s fake?” Molly asked.

“Even if it is real, it’s likely old. There are enough selkie stories that a good chunk of them are about people stealing or hiding skins that never got found. Could be it was an inheritance from a worse thief than the ones that sold it to us.”

“See, I still don’t like that,” Molly said, irritable. “I don’t like that however indirectly we’re profiting off some asshole fucking someone over.”

“Even if it was a century ago?” Desmond asked flatly.

“Yes!”

“Well, fine. I get it. But that doesn’t solve the problem we’ve got now, which is, we paid for it and we still need it if we’re going to get things back on track.”

“Isn’t there  _ anything  _ else we could do?” Molly asked. 

“Like what?”

“I don’t know! Like-” Molly grasped for ideas. Desmond didn’t seem interested.

“If you don’t have anything new to say...” He turned away, beginning to head back towards the tents.

“No, wait!” Molly seized his arm, heart thumping. Caleb had promised they’d send a magical, secret message when they were done, and no such thing had arrived. “Listen, I’m trying not to argue! But this isn’t how we’ve ever worked before, and I don’t mean just having a ‘curio cabinet’. The whole point of us is that we entertain. We cheer people up, let ‘em see things they’ve never seen before. A selkie coat might excite some people, but not the kind of people we want in our audience.”

“I’ll take anyone in the audience at this point.” But Desmond turned back around. “I’m still not hearing any ideas from you, Molly.” 

Molly opened his mouth, and someone in the distance cried out, “Molly!”

All four of them paused. A bewildered expression crossed Gustav’s face, while Molly’s brow wrinkled. It took a minute for him to spot Jester, approaching at great speed. 

 

“Any luck?” Caleb whispered, barely audible, through the window. His forehead was only just visible above the sill. 

“There are a lot of drawers,” Nott hissed back. She’d found a closet, which had initially seemed promising, but she’d spotted nothing furry. 

“Molly has said he can only stall for so long. I don’t want you to get caught.”

“Then stop talking.” Nott paced back over to where Molly had said he’d seen the skin. It still wasn’t there. The cabinets were the reasonable next step, but she’d have to climb to get to those, and that was risky. 

It was lucky her feet were still bare, or Nott might not have noticed where the floor was still wet. 

Nott’s eyes shot down, and yes, there was a visible stain from where something had dripped extensively. Just to check, Nott shoved her nose right up against it and then licked it. The stain had the distinctive tang of salt.

Excited, Nott shifted around, straining her eyes to spot any kind of trail there might be. Smaller drops were harder to find - they’d mostly dried in the summer heat. But  _ mostly  _ meant there was enough for Nott to find.

Under the bed, in a locked chest that took about three seconds to pick, a thick fur skin was spread out over several lumpy treasures. Nott was careful not to disturb any of the others as she drew the skin out. It was best not to leave any trace.

The skin was  _ huge.  _ She could have wrapped it around herself twice from head to toe and had material left over. It was well-made, too, with some of the original details from the animal left over.

Nott rubbed the one of the flippers between her fingers, thinking. Fjord was weird, and he’d called it a robe. 

Nott wasn’t stupid. But she was getting paid gold for this, and she’d seen the way Fjord walked slowly, with a distant expression, like a man who’d had something vital cut out of him.

Nott bundled up the robe as small as she could to shove it into her bag, moved a chair as quietly as possible, and climbed back out the window. 

 

“I’m glad I spotted you!” Jester cried, rushing up to Molly heedless of Gustav or Desmond. “I need help. I lost a friend of mine. Have you seen a kind of tall guy who looks like a half-orc wandering around?”

It took all of Molly’s self-control to keep his eyebrows from shooting towards his hairline. Yasha had no such luck, but luckily she was standing behind the other two. 

“That’s a weirdly specific question,” Molly said, dodging around answering. “I’m afraid you’ve interrupted us kind of in the middle of a discussion.”

“Oh, no - I’m sorry this is a really crazy night for me! But I really need to find him!” Jester turned up her ‘pleading’ knob as far as it would go. Molly would have crumbled, if it weren’t so vital that he keep Desmond and Gustav from going back towards the tents until he got the all clear. 

“Can it wait?” He asked. “The fate of my circus is at stake.”

“It is?” Jester gasped. “Oh, no, I’m so sorry!”

“You came yesterday, at least you’re helping.” Molly waved her off. “Maybe come by in the morning, I can talk then. If I’m here.”

“But-” Jester bit her lip and looked around the group. Desmond was rubbing his eyes in the manner of the truly exhausted trying to keep their eyes from closing of their own volition. Gustav managed a wan smile, but dropped it half a second later. 

“But?” Yasha asked.

“It’s a long story,” Jester said, “but I can’t really wait until morning. Everything might go wrong.”

That, if anything, solidified that it had to be Fjord Jester was looking for. Molly didn’t know how the hell they knew each other, but it at least explained why Fjord had come onto land at all.

“Look,” Gustav said, beginning to sound as if even his patience was running out. “Molly’s right. Now’s a bad time, and not just because it’s the middle of the night. Unless you know where we can get the money to keep going-”

“I could-” Jester interrupted, then broke off. “Well - I don’t know.” She thought furiously for a few moments, while Desmond and Gustav exchanged bewildered looks. “You know how artists or musicians have rich patrons sometimes?”

“You think someone’s going to fund a circus?” Molly asked incredulously.

“Maybe! I’ve never seen one in Nicodranas before and people would like it.” Jester brightened. “I know! If you ask my mother, she’s sure to know who could help.”

Molly opened his mouth to respond, and words that did not sound like his own thoughts struck his mind.

_ We got it! We’re out of the way! You can reply to this message! _

“Great!” Molly said, accidentally aloud. Desmond stared at him like he was a crazy man. “What? It’s a good idea! In fact,” he continued, throwing an arm around Jester’s shoulders, “if she’s available to speak to, now would be a great time for me.”

“She might be,” Jester said, not questioning the sudden change in opinion. “She usually stays up late.”

“Excellent!”

“Molly, I  _ really  _ need to talk to you,” Jester said quickly. “Is there somewhere-?”

“Sure, let’s take a walk,” Molly said, relieved for the good excuse. He waved flippantly at Gustav. “Don’t stay up for me.”

“I already have,” Gustav grumbled good-naturedly. Desmond rolled his eyes and began walking back around the main tent. With his arm still clamped around Jester’s shoulders, Molly spun them around and began walking down the main street. 

“Molly-”

“Let’s get somewhere where we can stop first,” Molly said. “It’s been a long night, I can’t walk and talk at the same time.” He flashed her his most reassuring grin. Jester looked only partially convinced, but all she did was slip out from under his arm and walk beside him. 

Internally, Molly preened. Everything had gone according to plan. 

 

Caleb and Nott were the only ones bothering to huddle against the side of the building. 

They’d snuck around the city to Molly’s proposed meeting spot in a wide arc after retrieving the robe. It was a nerve-wracking journey, with Fjord along for it. As soon as the robe had touched his shoulders the distant look had gone away (though, Caleb noticed with interest, the ill one had not) and he’d straightened to a previously unnoticeable height. He didn’t seem at all interested in trying to sneak, or else he was uniquely terrible at it. With the robe back, a noble presence had returned to him, and he walked everywhere like he knew precisely where he was going and had every right to be going there, while Caleb and Nott skulked in the shadows in the side of the street about twenty feet behind him. 

Caleb had had to practically drag him into a side alley once they got to the right place, so they wouldn’t be noticed. Fjord insisted on standing with his back to the wall, one hand holding the robe with a white-knuckled grip as he had been ever since he’d put it back on. Nott, hidden behind a water barrel, was keeping an eye out for their patrons. 

Molly and Yasha appeared after a few tense minutes of waiting, during which Fjord shifted uncomfortably and Caleb nearly held his breath trying not to be seen. He and Nott had had several close shaves with the city guard already, and he was pretty sure Nicodranas had a curfew. He’d never been outside the Empire before, and despite the week it had taken to get to Nicodranas he kept expecting Crownsguard to round a corner. Despite what the Dragon Guard had been like so far, he infinitely preferred them to the Empire’s methods.

But Molly and Yasha did eventually reappear. Caleb’s chest tightened when he saw the third figure with them, but it was only a stocky tiefling girl in a flouncy dress. Molly must have picked up a friend on the way. Caleb continued to lurk, waiting for Molly to get rid of her and rendezvous with them properly. 

But then Fjord stepped  _ out into the street _ , of  _ course,  _ and the blue tiefling gave a shriek and ran forward.

 

Molly lingered behind as Jester leaped and was swept up into a hug by Fjord. He lifted her off her feet and seemed ready to swing her around, but he was still unsteady on his feet despite the robe hanging off his shoulders. Jester was already talking in a breathless rush. Molly couldn’t begin to make out individual words. Neither seemed inclined to let go anytime soon. 

“Alright,  _ alright,”  _ Caleb said, looking hassled. He’d slunk out from where he was blending into the nearby woodwork. “Does anyone else care not to be accosted by guards? Can we please move along?”

“Don’t worry so much,” Molly said flippantly. “The guards don’t care, and anyway we haven’t done anything that can be proven.”

“I would feel much more comfortable if we could do this somewhere other than the middle of the street.”

“Shall we go back to your room at the inn, then?” Molly asked, wrinkling his nose to get his sarcasm across. Caleb hesitated, glancing sidelong at Jester. “Oh, that’s Jester, by the way. You haven’t met.”

“Hi,” Jester said, hanging off Fjord’s neck. She was on tiptoe and still forcing him to bend over. Molly hadn’t noticed before quite how tall Fjord was. Interestingly, he seemed quite content to hunch over and stay cheek-to-cheek with Jester. 

“Our business is done here, I think,” Caleb said flatly. “You still owe that gold piece and some silver.”

“Business?” Jester asked, finally letting go of Fjord as Molly dug for his purse. “What business?”

“They helped me retrieve my robe,” Fjord said. “There were some complications.”

“It got taken? Oh, no, Fjord! Are you okay?”

“I’m fine now.” There was a tenseness to the lines around Fjord’s smile. “But I’d prefer not to stay on land any longer than we have to.”

Jester bit her lip. “But we’re still not any closer to finding it than we were before.”

Caleb, Molly noticed, was paying more attention to their conversation than to the money Molly was handing him. He considered slipping a couple silvers back into his own hand, but it was too late to pull that kind of maneuver off properly. 

“What are you trying to find?” Piped a voice from behind a crate. Once again, Molly hadn’t seen Nott, even though he’d been looking that time. Jester jumped, not expecting another stranger to speak up.

“Well-” Jester glanced at Fjord, then at Caleb. “You helped him get his robe back?”

“Yes,” Caleb and Nott said simultaneously, voices overlapping.

“Maybe - maybe you could help us just a little more.” 

Molly saw the skepticism on Caleb’s face, and sighed. He hoped Jester had more gold in her pockets. 

 

Caleb refused to talk business until they could find somewhere private to speak, so the six of them moved off down the street. Molly had thought (probably along the same lines as Caleb) that they’d end up going back to Caleb and Nott’s room, but Jester spotted an inn along the way and said,

“Oh, there’s a place we could talk!”

“If we had a room,” Caleb said, frowning. “Otherwise we’d still be in a public space.”

“We could get one.”

“It is not very good practice to get a room elsewhere just to talk privately when one is at hand that will suffice.”

“But it’s so far away-”

“It’s really not.”

“I’d prefer expediency, if it’s all the same to you,” Fjord said. “Even a little bit of time can make a difference.”

Caleb squinted at him distrustfully. “We can spare enough time to walk a little farther-”

“For gods’ sake, if Jester wants to rent a quick room, let her,” Molly broke in. “It’s her gold, and you’ve postponed long enough.”

“I am  _ trying  _ not to get arrested, rightfully or otherwise-”

“Would you all  _ shut up?”  _ The shutters of a window on the inn’s second floor flew open. “I’m trying to sleep -  _ you!”  _

“What?” Molly said, bewildered by the interloper. The girl - hadn’t he seen her the night before, in the audience? -  _ jumped out the goddamn window  _ and would have lunged at Caleb if Jester hadn’t grabbed her. 

“Beau, wait! He’s alright!”

“He was trying to steal from me yesterday!” Beau said incredulously. She struggled, but couldn’t break Jester’s viselike grip.

“If I recall you got your purse back pretty quickly, so I think that evens us out,” said Caleb, stepping back to give Beau and Jester a wide berth. Nott had a hand on her crossbow. 

“You little-”

“Beau, please, don’t, I need his help!”

“Help?” Beau twisted around to look at Jester, scowling. “What for?”

“It’s too much to explain out in the street,” Jester said. Caleb, who had opened his mouth probably to say exactly that, closed it again. “We were looking for somewhere to go inside and talk - oh, but you have a room here!”

“Yeah, but I’m not letting  _ him  _ into it. My stuff’s in there.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Molly said. It was far too late at night for bullshit. “Really? No one’s going to steal from you. Your room is closest.”

“Please?” Jester asked sweetly. The effect was somewhat ruined by the iron grip she had on Beau’s arms. 

Beau’s angry expression wilted. “Fine,” she said grudgingly, “but if he takes anything, I’m beating his ass.” 

 

The first order of business, once they all got back up into Beau’s room, was for Jester to explain to more people than she had expected what she and Fjord were doing running around Nicodranas in the middle of the night. 

Molly raised his eyebrows at the beginning of the tale and did not lower them. Beau, as soon as Fjord came into the story, assumed an incredulous expression and kept glancing between the two of them. Caleb shrank awkwardly into his seat against the wall when Molly took up the telling to explain what he was doing there, and everybody pretended they weren’t looking around to see where Nott had gotten to when Molly mentioned her. 

“You really want to do that?” Beau asked when the storytelling had finished. “Go out to sea for the rest of your life?”

“I can do whatever I like with my life,” Jester said stubbornly. “And besides, I do know how to swim.”

“She’s got a point, though,” Caleb said. “It is a big decision to make overnight.”

“It was not made overnight, and besides, my mother approves.” Jester resisted the urge to stick her tongue out at them.

“Yes, so you said,” Molly said. “But you’re running out of time, as it’s nearly dawn, and nobody at the University is going to be awake at this hour. Gods know why I still am. I don’t know if it’s going to be easy to get this job done.”

“It is about one-thirty, by now,” Caleb said. “There is at least four hours until sunrise. Though I don’t know either what you expect to be able to do in four hours.”

“Well, not go to the University for starters,” Beau said. “Everyone knows the selkie skin in Nicodranas is in a private collection.”

Everyone turned to stare at Beau.

“What?” Beau demanded.

“How do  _ you  _ know that?” Nott asked suspiciously, from what sounded like under the bed. There was a catlike  _ mrrow,  _ and then Nott said in an undertone, “Shh, I’m not even stepping on your tail this time.”

“I went to school,” Beau said defensively, looking around at the ring of surprised faces. “How do  _ you  _ not know that? You’re all from Nicodranas.”

“We’re not,” Molly and Caleb said at the same time, gesturing to two different people.

“We don’t have ways of knowing what happens to lost selkie skins,” Fjord said. “Generally if someone goes up and doesn’t come back, no one’s inclined to go after them, since it’s more likely someone’ll be on the lookout for a lady with a fine coat like the first. And we don’t exactly get news from land on the regular.”

“What kind of private collection?” Jester said. 

Beau looked embarrassed. “I figured you knew,” she said, “since you said you’d been there. The only selkie skin anybody brags about owning in Nicodranas is owned by Lord Felmet.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, it only took eight chapters, but finally everyone's in the same place!


	9. Theft

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In Which Shit Goes Down

It took the entire contents of Jester’s coinpurse to persuade Caleb and Nott to commit another theft, especially from such a prominent man. Jester had an awful lot of gold in her purse, though, so it was without a single demand for another one of Yasha’s hair beads that the seven of them gathered up what they needed and made their way out of the inn.

The moon was hidden behind the stormclouds that had lingered all evening. Caleb swore he heard faint thunder, and in a few minutes they could all see distant lightning flashing over the roofs and treetops. Halfway up the hill that led to Felmet’s manor rain had begun to drizzle down. By the time they reached the house it was turning the dirt road to puddle-filled muck and drumming heavily against the roof.

The window that Jester had snuck out of before was still open. The room was dark and cool, the stone floor shining with their reflections as Jester helped everyone one by one hop over the sill. Her Blessing only worked on herself, but with help, she could keep anyone else from making a load of noise. 

“I’m sure it’s not in here,” she whispered, “or else I would have seen it. There’s a hallway outside; I only saw part of that space.”

“He’d have it on display, right?” Beau whispered back. “If it’s a well-known fact that the Felmets own a selkie skin, they’d have it hanging up somewhere.”

“Probably,” Caleb said hoarsely. Jester wasn’t sure if he was trying to whisper, or if his voice just sounded like that now. “Nott and I will go-”

“Maybe you should go with one of them,” Nott interrupted, just as quietly. Caleb blinked owlishly down at her. “You and I can both cast Message - we can communicate between, um, groups? If we’re doing groups?”

“Groups is good,” Jester said. “We don’t have a lot of time.” It had taken nearly an hour just to get there. “Caleb can come with me and Fjord. Um - Yasha and Molly, I guess you go with Nott and Beau?”

“Fine with me,” Molly said. Beau gave him a wary once-over, glanced at Yasha, and nodded curtly. 

“Does everyone remember the plan?” Jester asked. When she got nods in response, she said, “Okay, so where are we going afterwards?”

“The cove you gave us directions to,” Molly said. “If we get split up, head there. If we’re not there by sunrise, we’ve been captured and are currently in jail awaiting bailout.”

“Which may or may not come, since Caleb has all the money,” Beau muttered.

“If whoever is in jail has the coat, I will consider it,” Caleb said. He bent down and scooped up Frumpkin, settling the cat around his neck like a scarf. Frumpkin bore it patiently, tail waving back and forth. “Let’s go?”

“Okay, okay.”

They split up in the hall, the larger group moving quietly upstairs while Jester led Caleb and Fjord further down the hall. There were a great many doors leading into a great many rooms, and it was hard to tell which ones were most promising. 

“We must start somewhere,” Caleb said, when they reached the end of the hall. “Work our way back, perhaps - but it will take a while.”

“We’ll have to be very quiet, then,” Jester said firmly, and tried the handle of the nearest door.

 

“You’re  _ jingling,”  _ Beau hissed accusingly.

“I’m  _ sorry  _ if my existence offends you so much,” Molly muttered. Irritatingly, Beau was right - the slight movement of simply walking was enough to make his horn jewelry clink against itself. “It’ll still jingle in my pocket.”

“Shut up,” Nott whispered harshly, looking up from where she was picking the lock on the topmost drawer of an elaborately carved bureau. Beau rolled her eyes and went back to checking the bookshelf for a secret lever that might reveal some kind of treasure room. 

Molly made a gesture like he was choking himself towards Yasha, who was only half paying attention. She was standing just inside the doorway, watching the hall. They were only on their second room, but every room they’d seen so far was large enough that it warranted entering to figure out whether the skin was there or not.

Molly had seen the length of the hall. It was going to be a long night.

 

The three downstairs nearly gave themselves away when Fjord’s coat caught on a suit of armor’s elbow piece and almost pulled the whole thing over. Only Jester’s nimbleness, Caleb’s anxious quick reflexes, and a convenient roll of thunder kept things from going south. 

“That was lucky,” Caleb panted, still clutching the armor’s plated arm. “Quick - untangle yourself, and into this room.”

Jester and Fjord quickly obeyed. Caleb closed the door behind them as fast as he dared. It was darker inside this room - the curtains were closed. As the three of them blinked and took a moment to adjust, a faint flash illuminated the edges of the curtains. The patter of rain outside was growing heavier by the minute.

“The rain will make us harder to hear,” Caleb said, “which is good. Can one of you open the curtains? This whole room is dark to me.”

“Oh, right, humans don’t have darkvision.” Jester tiptoed across the room, then stopped halfway with a snort. She flung out her hands, and Thaumaturgy whisked open the curtains.

Humanoid shapes stared in from every window.

With a yelp, Jester slammed all the curtains shut again. There was a sound from behind her like Caleb colliding with a sofa as he leaped backwards in surprise, and a hiss from Frumpkin. The three of them stayed frozen for a good thirty seconds, breathing heavily. 

“Did they see us?” Fjord whispered, after no audible alarm was raised. 

“I don’t know,” Jester said. As soundlessly as possible, she crept over to the curtains and pulled one set open the tiniest crack. With the rain pounding down from a dark sky, it took her a moment to see what was outside.

Jester snorted, bending double without care for how she was pulling the curtain open. “It’s  _ hedges,”  _ she said, a little louder than a whisper. “They cut the hedges to look like people. No wonder the curtains were closed.”

“Oh,” Caleb said faintly. Jester saw he had one hand pinching the bridge of his nose. “Okay, then. Let’s just get on with looking while we are still un-caught.”

 

The fifth room they tried, upstairs, was occupied. Nott had almost opened the door when she saw the flickering candlelight from underneath, and leaped back, holding out an arm to bar the others from getting any closer. Her arm connected with Molly’s knee, making him stumble back and bang into a decorative piece on the wall holding a pair of dull, fancy swords. It clanged against the wall, and his jewelry clinked against it.

Yasha winced. Nott froze. Beau put a hand on her staff. There was a chair-scraping noise from inside the room, like someone was standing up.

“Anna?” Called a voice from inside. “Is that you? I told you, I don’t need anything tonight.”

Beau looked at Molly, panicked. Yasha was slowly putting up a hand to the hilt of her sword. Nott’s fingers and stance were twitching, like she couldn’t decide whether to go for a dagger or for the closest window.

“My apologies,” Molly replied, in his most passable falsetto. “I only thought-”

“I don’t pay you to think, Anna.”

“Yes, my lord.” 

The chair inside the room scraped again. The tableau in the hallway remained frozen for a minute more, before everyone slowly relaxed.

“That was clever,” Beau said grudgingly when the door of the next empty room had closed behind them.

“Thanks.” Molly grinned, teeth flashing faintly in the darkness as lightning forked down outside. The storm seemed to be increasing in ferocity. 

“You should still take off your shit, though.”

“Fuck off.”

 

Lit by occasional flashes of lightning and their movements disguised by the drumroll of rain, the search progressed slowly. Nott had sent several Messages to Caleb, updating him on the upstairs’ group’s progress - no coat had been produced on their end, either. Jester had passed frustration and moved into anger by the time the tenth room yielded no coat, and the hallway still stretched out before them. The first floor seemed like it would never end.

Jester kept nervously pestering Caleb for the time. Sunrise, he said, would be between five and five-thirty in the morning; it was two-fifty, then three-oh-five, then three-fifteen. By three-thirty, Fjord was looking as pale as green skin allowed for, and when Jester took his hand (which she did oftener and oftener) it was clammy and cold in a way she didn’t like. 

“Perhaps,” Caleb suggested, upon seeing her face after the most recent room failed to yield anything, “I could cast Detect Magic? It might work - I got a ‘ping’ on it before, from his cloak.”

“Could you?” It was almost painful, the way Jester’s face so nakedly filled with hope. Caleb swallowed back a number of comments he could have made (why not ask him to do so earlier when she knew he had magic? Why allow herself to be so vulnerable to the world?) and nodded.

“Ja, I can. Normally I would take the time to do it to spare myself losing the energy for another spell I might want later, but - in this case, I think, I can do it quickly.”

 

“This looks like a fancy room,” Beau said in an undertone, as they crept towards the end of the hall. They were on the edge of the house, now, overlooking the hill they’d climbed up. Beau was glad for the relentless rain; it would erase any tracks they might have left. 

“What does that mean?” Molly asked, raising his voice a tick to be heard over the roll of thunder.

“There’s a bunch of scrollwork around the door, look. If it’s a fancy room, it’ll have fancy things in it,” Beau said. Lightning flashed, and she had to take a minute to reorient her night vision. Nott had stopped and turned to face her, yellow eyes gleaming. “Fancy things like  _ expensive  _ things. And whatever’s rare is always the most expensive. I’ll bet there aren’t that many sealskins in the world.”

“Or selkie coats,” Yasha murmured.

“Right, coats,” Beau said. Yasha always did that, every time Beau asked if someone else had spotted the skin - corrected her to ‘coat’ or ‘selkie coat’. Calling it anything else seemed to touch a nerve, for whatever reason. Beau wished she were better at thinking of it as a coat, but picturing a plain fur skin with sleeves or a collar didn’t help her relabel it, just made her picture some rich fop wearing a fancy coat with selkie fur lining. 

“Let’s take a look, then,” Nott said. “We don’t have any time to waste.” 

Beau swung the door open eagerly. It glided open on silent hinges, ruffling the top edge of a comfortable carpet, and revealed a tall four poster bed.

Beau froze. Behind her, Molly choked off a gasp.

Thunder rolled.

 

“There,” Caleb said suddenly. Detect Magic only had a thirty-foot radius, but even passing in front of the door was enough to send off a signal in his mind. “In here.”

Jester opened the door too hastily, making the hinges squeak as she barrelled in. Fjord was right on her heels; Caleb cast a wary glance to both ends of the hallway, making sure they were still alone, before he followed too.

Thunder rolled as he closed the door.

 

“Close the door,” Nott said very quietly, as the four of them stared at the figure under the covers of the four-poster bed. Somehow, the light falling over him from the doorway had not been enough to wake him. 

“What if it’s in this room?” Molly whispered, lowering his voice as far as he could without becoming inaudible.

“We can’t risk that-” Both of them froze as the man shifted. He sighed, kicked a leg, and settled back into sleep. 

 

“There it is!” Jester almost forgot to whisper as she rushed across the room. The coat, very noticeably a seal’s fur, was hanging in a place of honor between two windows, mounted like a decorative spear. It was pale grey and spotted like it was freckled, and it looked less dusty than anything else in the room.

“Wait,” Caleb said as Jester approached, as he realized what else had set off Detect Magic. “Don’t touch-”

Jester yanked the skin off its mounting board.

 

The man in the bed bolted upright with a gasp. Beau slammed the door shut, and whirled to face the group.

“Can anyone lock it?” She demanded. The rain was truly pounding down - she couldn’t have whispered if she wanted to. 

Yasha seized a table that was standing nearby. The ornamental vase it had been supporting went crashing to the ground as she jammed it under the door handle, levering the decorative moulding to keep it jammed shut, at least for a moment.

“Let’s go!” Molly seized Nott and would have carried her down the hall if she hadn’t wriggled away and sprinted twice as far as he could have hauled her. Beau was already halfway to the stairs. 

The house was waking. Lightning flashed and threw opening doors into stark relief as four sets of feet pounded down the hall and confused calls resounded from inside various rooms. Beau slammed one door closed with her stick and heard a shriek as the woman who’d opened it was shoved back. 

“Caleb!” Nott hissed. Even running down the stairs as fast as she could, she’d managed to fumble a copper wire out of her sleeve. “Where are you? You can reply to this message!”

Yasha crashed into the front door with one shoulder and threw it open as thunder crashed. It was so loud it had to be coming from directly overhead. The four of them sprinted out into the storm. 

“In the back!” Nott said. “He’s in the back - they went out the window - we have to wait!”

“We need to get out of here!” Beau shouted back. She held one hand up to ineffectually shield her eyes from the driving rain. “A rich asshole like this has got to employ guards! We can’t stay!”

“We wait!” Molly said. “We’re not leaving anyone behind!”

Beau growled. It was inaudible over the noise of the storm. Her scowl, however, was clearly visible. “We need to at least get farther away!”

“Then move!” Molly said impatiently. 

“Wait!” Nott cried. A shabby figure was booking it towards them across the sweeping lawn. Caleb had come into sight; so did the two sword-wielding humanoids chasing him.

“Shit!” Beau said. She ran, despite the sucking mud on the ground, towards Caleb. As soon as he got close enough she leaped over him (Caleb had the presence of mind to duck) and kicked one guard in the face. He went down fast. The other whirled around with her sword, but Caleb seized her ankle and she tripped. 

“Go, go!” Beau shouted. She and Caleb took off, both coated with mud. Frumpkin, who had fallen off Caleb’s shoulders in the confusion, raced after them. Molly and Yasha were already booking it down the hill. Nott only started running once Caleb had caught up.

“Where’s Jester?” She shrieked, trying to make herself heard over the thunder. 

“They ran!” Caleb panted. “I didn’t see - there were more guards. There was an alarm on the coat. Jester took it, and the guards came out of nowhere, and we all went in different directions. I don’t know.”

“Shit!” Nott risked a glance back up the hill. Nobody was in sight. No guards, nor Jester or Fjord, were following them. Then she tripped over a rock, but Caleb caught her by the collar before she faceplanted.

“We need to keep moving,” he said. “The cove - yes?”

“How many guards went after them?” Beau demanded.

“Eh - half?”

_ “Half?”  _ That was one guard for each of them. Beau grimaced. She hoped Jester was okay.

“Where’s Jester?” Molly demanded, when they got to the bottom of the hill. He and Yasha had taken shelter under a tree with a broad canopy. They were still dripped on, but at least the rain didn’t  _ pound  _ down.

Caleb repeated his story as Beau tried to wring out her robe, nearly re-drenching Frumpkin as he wound between her ankles. The storm had lessened somewhat, or would - there was a stripe of proper blue on the horizon. Which made Beau uncomfortable, now that she thought about it. It shouldn’t be that easy to spot unless sunrise was close. 

“What time is it?” She broke in. Caleb blinked.

“Four-thirty-five,” he said after a moment of thought. 

“We’ve got to move fast,” Molly said. “Are you sure you didn’t see either of them follow you?”

“If I did I would’ve said so!” Beau snapped. “They must have found another way. If we go all the way back up, we’ll never make it to the cove in time for sunrise.” Fjord and Jester must have found a way - the alternative was too much to bear. 

The coat was  _ heavy. _

Fjord had grabbed her hand and started running as soon as the guards appeared. The rain had soaked them instantly once they’d jumped out the window, but that hadn’t been enough to get away. Jester kept stumbling when she tried to get a better grip on the selkie coat. It was thick and dense, and the rain soaking into the old fur didn’t make it any lighter.

They’d lengthened the distance between them and the guards. But scattered trees were not enough to keep them out of sight. Jester could hear their shouts echoing over the heavy patter of rain.

The storm was truly directly overhead. It had been building up all evening, and now it was letting loose everything it had on Nicodranas. Roads were turned into muddy morasses, and tree branches groaned under the onslaught. The sea roared and foamed, and spray thrown up from wild waves mixed with the rain.

When Jester and Fjord came to the edge of the drop, Jester could not tell which was soaking her face.

“Oh, no,” she said, rapidly taking in the situation. Her own voice was drowned out before it reached her ears. They’d run from Felmet’s house away from Nicodranas. The hill ended in a sharp drop, straight down to the ocean. Jester saw the waves churning among the rocks, and quickly stepped back.

“The guards are still coming!” Fjord shouted. He was looking back the way they had come. “Is there another path?”

“I don’t think so!” 

Fjord wiped his hair out of his face. His gaze landed on the coat Jester was still clutching.

“Jester, do you trust me?”

“Of course!”

Fjord tugged the coat out of her hands and threw it around her shoulders. It was somehow even heavier like that, a thick weight dragging down her posture. Jester held it on with both hands, wishing she had her cloak pin. 

“We have to run!” Fjord said.

“What?”

“Run! If we make a running leap, we can avoid the rocks at the bottom!”

_ “What!” _

__ “Please, if we can get in the ocean it’ll be okay! I promise!”

Jester gulped, remembering how the waves had been so rough and the rocks so sharp. Fjord squeezed her hand, casting a nervous look over his shoulder.

“Pinkie promise me,” Jester said. Without hesitation, Fjord hooked his pinkie around hers. 

“We’ll be fine,” he said.

“...Okay.” Impulsively. Jester leaned up and stole a quick, rainwater-wet kiss. “Okay, let’s go.”

The guards made it past the last straggling trees just as Fjord and Jester leaped as far as they could.

Wearing soaked armor, like her compatriot, one stepped up to the edge and looked over. Her fellow nervously took hold of one shoulder.

“I’m not going to fall,” the first said. “I’m not an idiot. I don’t see either of them.”

“Fuck,” the second sighed. “Felmet’s not going to be happy about this.”

“Well, maybe some of this thunder will drown out the shouting.”

They both turned, sheathing their swords, and began to walk back to the house.

 

On the way to the cove, Molly turned his head towards the sky. “Hey,” he said. “The rain’s letting up a bit.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :D
> 
> read and review, please!


	10. A Wedding

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally, we reach the end! :D I'm still really proud of how this story turned out. I hope you guys enjoyed it.

It did not feel better, hitting the water instead of the rocks.

The force of the impact knocked the breath out of Jester. Air bubbled up from her mouth and drifted away in the freezing cold sea. Currents whirled around her and tossed her about like a leaf in the wind. The coat was nearly pulled from her grasp. The bubbles that had escaped her looked like they were moving deeper down. Jester tried to swim back up to the surface, but the coat’s thick weight had settled around her and trapped her legs together. She couldn’t tell what direction the surface  _ was.  _

Another shape bumped into her. Jester struggled to extricate an arm to grab onto it. Through surprisingly clear vision, she saw Fjord’s white-speckled body move underneath hers, and he shoved her upwards.

Jester’s head broke the surface. She coughed and breathed in gratefully as Fjord surfaced just next to her, dark seal eyes shining in the dim light. He looked funny, like water had gotten in her eyes and made everything blurry. But the water didn’t feel quite so cold, even though Jester was still struggling to stay afloat. Fins and flippers, she thought, were easier to swim with than arms and legs.

Wait.  _ Wait.  _ Flippers!

Jester cried out in excitement. It came out as an odd honking bark - she’d heard it plenty of times before, around the docks, when seals gathered on the far-out rocks at the harbor’s fringes. Fjord bumped into her and pushed his nose up against hers in a seal sort of kiss full of whiskers. Overhead, thunder rolled, but much more quietly than before. The storm had burnt itself out with its furious enthusiasm, and was slowly drifting away.

Fjord nudged Jester again, then dived underwater. Jester breathed in deeply and followed him, delighted by how clearly she could see. The saltwater didn’t sting at all anymore. When currents buffeted her, she could just roll along with them, instead of getting tangled up in skirts. 

Fjord was a good underwater swimmer, in his seal form. Jester followed the path he set, and the two of them navigated easily among the rocks and plants that littered the seafloor. Every time Jester stopped to look at something, Fjord would come back and nose at her until she moved on. At least there would be plenty of time for looking at everything past sunrise - the ocean hid a world Jester could not have possibly imagined. 

It took swimming past the rocky barrier for Jester to realize where they were. She hadn’t recognized the cove from the outside - she’d never come into it that way before. Fjord swam up to the sandbar and stepped onto it, breaking through the water’s surface. Jester followed - without the panic of feeling like she was drowning, it felt easy as anything to change her skin back into a coat.

“We did it!” Jester threw her arms around Fjord. He caught her up in a tight hug and swung her around in a circle, making her shriek in delight. “I can’t believe that worked!”

“I can’t believe the coat works for you!” Fjord said. He was grinning broadly. “I mean, of course I thought it was going to, but seeing it-!”

Whoops and shouts from the shore interrupted him. In the faint starlight filtering down between the dissipating clouds, Jester saw five figures on the beach, waving their arms and jumping up and down.

Yasha didn’t waste any time before striding into the water. Molly and Beau nearly pushed each other over, trying to keep their balance with the other’s shoulder while scrambling to take off their boots. Even Caleb was there, with Nott clinging onto his coat. 

“You look pretty,” Yasha said, coming up onto the sandbar with soaked pants. Her boots were already off, which relieved Jester. She imagined saltwater would ruin the leather and fur. “The coat fits perfectly.”

“I know!” Jester beamed. The coat didn’t feel heavy at all anymore. Or, rather, its weight didn’t bother her. It felt completely natural, the way the water soaking her dress and hair did. 

“Did it work?” Molly hollered, splashing through the surf with his coat tucked haphazardly into his waistband and his pants rolled up to where his boots normally ended. Beau chased after him without bothering to keep her robe from dragging in the water.

“Yeah!” Jester waved enthusiastically. “Look! I got it!”

“What time is it?” Molly turned around to yell back at the beach. Caleb cupped his hands around his mouth. 

“Four-fifty!”

“With time to spare, no less!” Molly tried to run through knee-deep water and failed, but straggled onto the sandbar nonetheless. “You two should get going - or, you came in by the water, does that mean you’re alright?”

“I’m great now,” Fjord said. His hand was warm, still keeping a firm grip on Jester’s hand. “But I wouldn’t like to chance sunrise, all the same.”

“Wait, is that all it takes?” Jester asked, as Beau splashed up to join them. “If I leave with you is that how selkies get married?”

“Basically, yes. There’s not many other ways to do it underwater, other than finding a place to change and saying a few things.”

“Oh. I guess I always pictured something more elaborate.”

“I don’t think you have the time,” Molly said sympathetically.

“Sure you do,” Yasha said. “As long as you keep it short.”

“We don’t exactly have a priest, though,” Beau said. “Or, like, anything except water. And sand.”

“I’m ordained.”

“You  _ are?”  _ Molly asked. Yasha nodded. “How?”

Yasha shrugged.

“Why - nevermind,” Beau said, and turned back towards shore. “Caleb! Get out here, we’re having a wedding!”

Caleb had a short conference with Nott, then sat down and started taking his shoes off. 

“Can I borrow that ribbon in your hair?” Yasha asked. Jester reflexively lifted a hand to her horns, just to check, while Beau turned back around to look surprised.

“Me?” She said.

“Yeah, I need one.”

“...Don’t break it.” Beau untied her bun and handed over the broad ribbon. 

“You look so nice with your hair down, Beau,” Jester said.

“Shut up,” Beau said, but it lacked heat. On the shore, Nott had clambered onto Caleb’s shoulders, and the two of them were slowly making their way out. Frumpkin appeared to be balancing on Nott’s head. 

“Oh, wait, before you start,” Jester said. She pulled out her earrings and the cap off her horn, and handed them to Molly. “Can you hold onto these? If they get wet they’ll get rusty.”

“Do you intend to come back for them?” Molly asked doubtfully, taking the jewelry.

“I might! I promised to come back and visit my mom.”

Molly hesitated for the briefest second. “I don’t know if I’ll be in Nicodranas then,” he admitted, “but I’ll make my damndest effort. Or maybe give them to your mother to hold onto. Who knows what’ll happen to the circus? Maybe we’ll stay in Nicodranas for good. We might disband, or just the two of us will get kicked out once they find out what we’ve done tonight.”

“Good luck,” Jester said earnestly. “Oh - maybe give my mother these too.” Jester still had her sickle, and a waterlogged pencil. Molly tucked the pencil into a pocket and the sickle next to one of his own swords. “I hope the circus will be okay. I meant what I said about my mom.”

“Well, here’s hoping all this will at least get me in the door.” Molly winked, smiling crookedly on purpose. 

“I can stay,” Beau volunteered. “This city’s not so bad. And it keeps me away from-” She hesitated, and looked sidelong at Molly. “From stuff.”

“Terrible thing, stuff,” Molly said with a straight face.

“You guys don’t need to do all that just for  _ me,”  _ Jester said, beginning to tear up. “It would be okay if you just gave it to my mom. I don’t know if I’m going to be back in time for Midsummer even and it might only be one day.”

“You can owe me a favor,” Beau said gruffly. Caleb slogged through the water and up onto the sandbar with them, Nott clinging painfully tight to his hair. Frumpkin had migrated to scarf position on Nott.

“Give me your hand,” Yasha said. Jester obligingly extended one. Yasha tied the end of the blue ribbon around her wrist while they all watched curiously. “Now hold his hand with it.” Once Fjord had taken her hand, Yasha tied the ribbon around his wrist as well, then stood back, looking satisfied. “Okay, now you say nice things about each other.”

“Vows, or compliments?” Caleb asked. Nott shushed him.

“Either,” Yasha said. 

“Oh, no, now you put me on the spot,” Jester said, flushing. She covered her mouth with her free hand, looking away from Fjord. “My mind is blanking on me so hard right now, guys.”

“I can go first,” Fjord said. “This whole night has been so crazy, but I think this right now might’ve been the best ending I could’ve hoped for. I always liked you, and our conversations, but I never really thought it was going to go beyond that. And I hope that you never find a reason after tonight to regret what’s happening right now.”

“Of course I won’t!” Jester said. “You’re so nice and handsome and I’m sure there won’t be anything like,  _ world-ending terrible  _ that happens. I bet I can be pretty good at magic even when I don’t have hands, and anyway if I get lonely or anything the Traveler will still be there for me. And you too, if you want.”

“I’m not sure who the Traveler  _ is.” _

__ “Well, you’re getting married to me, so I think it’s too late to not want him to be there for you,” Jester said, beaming. “Don’t worry, he’s cool!”

“Well, alright,” Fjord said. He was wearing the smile of a man who did not realize he was smiling so widely. “The Traveler must be alright, if he comes with you. Should we do vows, too? I don’t know what those are.”

“Oh.” Jester sobered a little. “It’s a promise. Like, I’m going to say, I promise to stay with you forever and ever, and we’ll always be happy because we’ll always like each other.”

“That’s not a promise, that’s a fact. Except for the first part,” Fjord amended. “Forever is an awful long time. But I promise that I’ll do my best for you, for as long as our forever will last.” 

“And may the Stormlord be with you,” Yasha said ceremonially. “And also the Traveler, I guess.”

“Thank you,” said Jester, pretending not to blink tears away. Fjord’s vows had been awfully heartfelt. “He is.”

“And now you take the ribbon off. But you have to keep it. If it breaks within the first year, it’s bad luck. If it lasts, that’s good luck for the next seven years.”

“Aw,” Beau complained, scraping her hair out of her face.

“Oh - um.  Here.” Yasha untied one of the decorative strings from her fur-lined half-cape. “Uh, stand still.”

Molly smirked at Beau as Yasha tied her hair back up for her. Beau, blushing furiously, flipped him off out of Yasha’s line of sight. 

“Wait, aren’t we supposed to give gifts?” Nott asked. Jester looked up from picking at the knot Yasha had tied in the ribbon. “I didn’t come prepared for this!”

“No, it’s okay!” Jester reassured her.

“Can someone help?” Fjord asked, struggling to undo the knots one-handed. Molly leaned over to work on it. “Thanks.”

“But weddings are supposed to have all sorts of things!” Nott insisted. “It’s supposed to be pretty and you get lots gifts that will help you, I don’t know, make a life together. Caleb, that’s how you said humans do it, right?”

“Ja, I said that,” Caleb said, “but neither of these two are human, and it is a little past five o’clock now. We cannot exactly go shopping.” 

Nott hummed nervously, eyes flickering between Jester and Fjord as Molly got the second knot undone. 

“Here,” Molly said, “keep it like this.” The ribbon, which almost perfectly matched Jester’s hair, made for a neat little bow around the base of one horn. Jester patted it experimentally, then beamed.

“Oh, fine,” Nott cried, attracting attention again. “Just wait a second.” She dug through no less than three pockets, with one hand maintaining her death grip on Caleb’s hair, before coming up with what she’d been looking for. “Here. This is from me and Caleb.”

She was offering up a pair of rings, one silver, the other a thicker gold band with a tiny flashing gem. Jester gasped, hands flying to clasp the spot over her heart.

“Oh Nott, really?”

“Put them on before I change my mind!” Nott snapped. Caleb could feel her shaking a little bit as Fjord and Jester put the rings on each others’ hands, and patted her knee.

“That was very kind of you,” he said.

“You need rings at a wedding,” Nott muttered. “That’s what you said.”

“Yes, but it was still very nice to offer your collection.”

“Well-” Nott leaned down and whispered, “I didn’t give them the  _ best  _ ones.”

Caleb smiled, and refocused on the group. Molly had started chanting “Kiss, kiss,” and Beau was joining in. Fjord looked embarrassed, but Jester pulled him down for one, beaming too broadly to kiss him properly.

It looked, Caleb thought, like a very nice kiss. Despite the fact that they were both dripping wet and no romance novel cover had ever featured two nonhumans wearing unfashionable fur robes, it was a picturesque moment. There was an ache of emotion in his chest that he half-remembered, and a smile on his face.

“Now go!” Caleb said, when the kiss had gone on quite long enough. The two broke apart with a giggle from Jester and a selfconscious but smug smile from Fjord. Molly wolf-whistled, and Beau cheered. “It’s almost sunrise. I fully expect to see you at Midsummer, but right now whatever it is selkies do for honeymoons, you have got to be getting to it.”

“Oh, Caleb, are you staying too?” Jester cried. Caleb’s smile faltered for a moment.

“Ja, sure,” he said. “Midsummer, you said, right? I can be here for Midsummer.”

“Then it’s a deal,” Beau said firmly. “As many of us as can make it will be here, Midsummer. Got it?” There was a round of nods. 

“You guys are all so nice!” Jester hauled in Beau for a hug. Molly immediately wrapped his arms around both of them, giving Yasha and Caleb pointed looks. 

“I have to hold onto Nott,” Caleb said, wiggling his arms slightly to draw attention to how his hands were holding Nott’s ankles. Yasha tentatively leaned into the hug, putting one arm on Jester’s head.

“Get in here,” Fjord said, wrapping one arm around Caleb’s shoulders and the other around as much of the group as he could reach. Caleb stiffened as he was drawn in uncomfortably close. He could feel his coat slowly absorbing water where Fjord was pressed into him.

“Alright, now really get out of here,” Molly said, pulling away after a moment and breaking apart the group. “You two have business to do!” He raised his eyebrows suggestively. Jester giggled, grabbing Fjord’s hand again.

“I’m so glad I met all of you!” She said. 

“You’re not so bad yourself,” Beau muttered, beginning to look a little tearful herself. Molly snorted.

“Go!” Nott yelled. “I can see yellow on the horizon!”

Fjord tugged Jester’s hand. “C’mon,” he said. “Adventure awaits.”

“That sounds like the best thing ever,” Jester said. 

The two of then walked out until they were up to their waists, still holding hands. The quintet on the sandbar watched as a wave, taller than any others that had swelled up before, swept through the cove. 

The wave rolled right over Fjord and Jester’s heads. It nearly bowled over the rest of them - Caleb had to grab onto Yasha’s shoulder to keep from tumbling into the surf. The huge wave crashed with a mockery of thunder against the shore, and the residual currents tugged at Caleb’s coattails. 

After a moment, two round heads popped up where the cove led out to sea and looked back towards the group. One was white all down its chin, the other paler and sporadically spotted brown. Caleb could swear the second one had tiny, tightly curled horns. 

Nott raised one hand to wave. Molly raised a handkerchief to let flutter in the breeze. Beau was still squinting out into the twilight when light spilled over the cove.

The shadows of the five on the sandbar stretched impossibly far out over the water. The horizon was suddenly transformed from darkness into a deep blue, wisps of stormclouds scudding away over the water. Tiny whitecaps formed out at sea, highlighted with an impeccable hand for detail by the yellow light that was slowly spreading over everything, casting the cove into shades of gold. 

The sun had risen. 

 

Below the water, gently dappled by the light slowly spreading over the waves, Fjord and Jester swam out to sea. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, please read & review! I had a lot of fun making this, but it's still nice to hear back. 
> 
> (In hindsight, making Yasha the one to officiate has....way more significance than it did when I wrote this.)


End file.
